


a map towards honor

by galateaGalvanized



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), M/M, Mirror Universe, Multi, Obi-Wan has two hands and neither is holding his lightsaber, Slow Burn, twosomes then threesomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:16:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28863927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateaGalvanized/pseuds/galateaGalvanized
Summary: "Wait, I’m sorry, Satine, did you—did you steal two million clones?”“‘Steal’, Obi-Wan? You can’t steal free-willed people." Satine laughs. "No, my dear. Kal sent me the access codes for every landing pad, door, and defense network the Kaminoans had, and we shut it all down. I don’t think even their automatic toilets were working by the time we walked through their front doors. After that, well. We had a nice chat with the clones, and we killed every single Kaminoan that tried to stop any of us from walking back out.”Or:Satine steals some clones, steals a Jedi, and saves the universe. This is the way.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze
Comments: 112
Kudos: 418
Collections: Bad ass Obi fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really have no excuse for this beyond a deep and sincere love of Codywan, Obitine, and the Mandalorian culture as portrayed in the Republic Commandos books.
> 
> What follows is pretty much a rewrite of Clone Wars based entirely on how the story might be different if Satine had been a true Mandalorian.

Obi-Wan isn’t surprised that the Jedi Council sends him to negotiate with Mandalore. He isn’t surprised that the Senate expects miracles, and he isn’t even surprised that his landing ship is met by what looks like a full battalion of white-armored soldiers in formation, each equipped with a DC-17M blaster rifle and impeccable trigger discipline. They don’t shift their heads as he walks between their neat rows, but he can feel the weight of their eyes follow him up the landing strip and into the waiting speeder. In the Force, each and every one of them feels alert and steady: intangible proof that the feared Mandalorian warrior force has been rebuilt to an almost perfect degree.

No, these are things that he had expected, in one form or another. What surprises him most is how his breath still catches at the sight of Satine on the Mandalorian throne. How his heart still races in his chest, equal parts hopeful and terrified. He had hoped that a decade of time and endless parsecs of space would be enough distance for him to have moved on, but Fate has not been so kind. Walking into the throne room, he feels exactly as he did at fifteen, when he left her here with nothing but her wits to rebuild her entire culture.

His armed escort snaps off a salute and pivots as flawlessly as their comrades had held formation.

“Mand'alor Satine Kryze,” one of the men calls out, and his voice is deep and clear as it resounds throughout the room. The simplicity of the title is at odds with the opulence of the hall. “I present High Master Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Jedi Council.”

“Master Kenobi,” Satine calls out, and her voice hasn’t changed at all; it sounds like harp strings, high and cold, even through her helmet’s vocoder. She’s in full painted beskar’gam, and Obi-Wan recognizes the crisp blues and whites he had only ever caught glimpses of when they had been on the run together. “Welcome back to Mandalore. I trust you remember our customs.”

He does, in fact. His steps are measured as he traverses the thirty feet from the entranceway to the center of the room, exceedingly aware of the blasters trained on his back and the swing of the lightsaber at his hip. At the foot of the stairs leading to the throne, he sweeps his hood back and stares directly into the visor of Satine’s helmet. She’s broadcasting into the Force, playful and anticipatory, and he wonders if she’s doing it on purpose. 

After a single breath, he bends at the waist in a courtly bow, and then, midway through the motion, he drops to one knee. The dark red carpet on the stairs in front of him is all he can see.

“I acknowledge the Mand’alor,” he says, and he keeps his tone as even and steady as he can. He stands after a second’s pause, rolling back up to his feet and straightening his back to stare into Satine's visor once again. He tucks his hands into the sleeves of his robes to hide his white knuckles. In the Force, her feelings turn over from anticipatory to satisfied, and relief unfurls, unbidden, in his chest. Being in front of her again is making him question his decisions in ways he hasn’t in years.

She stands and removes her helmet to reveal winter-blonde hair tucked into a strict bun and eyes as blue and inexorable as glacial ice. 

“Obi-Wan,” she says, and his name on her lips is bittersweet even as he takes it as a good sign. “My old friend, we have much to discuss. I have asked for a meal to be prepared, if you’re ready.”

That’s a second good sign. The political factions seeking to kill Satine a decade ago had been unwilling to discuss terms until the very end, until the remainder of Satine’s family and supporters had forced them at gunpoint to sit at a table and break bread as equals. The soldiers don’t relax, exactly, but there is a noticeable easing of tension across the entirety of the audience hall. Satine beckons to Obi-Wan and then waves her hand to dismiss the gathered troops. 

Obi-Wan can’t help but glance back at them as he follows Satine into the adjoining hallway.

“Your warriors are very well-trained,” he says, and his hand strokes his beard as he considers the uniformity of their actions and the cleanliness of their armor. He has no idea how she’s managed to build such a professional army in such a short period of time, but then, it never paid for anyone to underestimate Satine Kryze.

“Thank you,” she says, and there’s laughter in her voice that makes him curious. “Would you like to meet some of them?”

“Of course. I'd been hoping to meet the ones in your honor guard on the walk over.”

She gives a real laugh, at that. 

“A Mand’alor who needs a guard in their own home is no true Mand’alor,” she says. 

The next turn they take brings them to a sprawling banquet hall. The centerpiece of the room is a long table covered in a crisp white linen, with carved wooden chairs—made of  _ real  _ wood—tucked beneath it on both sides. The table itself is mostly empty but for a cluster of plates at the far end of the room, dancing with color where they catch the light from a triptych of stained glass windows. Servers are putting steaming bowls of food on the table, and Obi-Wan’s mouth starts to water at the sight of roast shatual, braised nerf ribs, and what looks to be a tureen of mushroom soup. 

There are three people waiting in addition to the food, and they stand as Obi-Wan and Satine approach. The woman to the right of the head of the table is familiar, at least. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn had not been explicitly tasked with protecting Bo-Katan during their stay on Mandalore, but keeping Satine safe had often involved watching out for Satine’s sister. Her helmet sits next to her dinner plate, and though her face looks more weathered, her eyes are as sharp as they ever were.

The two others are men so similar that Obi-Wan is sure they must be twins. The man to the right of Bo-Katan has blonde hair close-cropped to his skull, and the one directly opposite him has a crew cut of thick, dark brown hair. Other than that—and their different presences in the Force—they look practically identical. Obi-Wan gives the two men and Bo-Katan each a nod of acknowledgement as Satine leads him up the length of the table. She takes the seat at the end seat, gestures for Obi-Wan to take the space to her left, and then sits with a sigh.

“Master Kenobi, I believe you know my sister and Al’Ori’Ramikade, Bo-Katan,” Satine says, and Obi-Wan swallows his surprise that she has given the title of military commander to someone other than herself. Bo-Katan flashes him a quick, predatory smile. “Next to her is Captain Rex of the 501st, and next to you is Marshal Commander Cody of the 212th.”

“Captain, Commander,” Obi-Wan says, looking at each of them in turn, and his eyes linger on the forked scar still red and shiny with healing snaked around Cody’s left eye. The battalion numbers make him wonder: just how many troops does the Mandalorian Army host?

Before he can ask, Satine picks up her fork and snags a piece of the shatual. After she swallows, she raises an eyebrow, and everyone turns to the food. 

“I think we all know why you’re here, Obi-Wan, but tell us anyways,” Satine says after everyone has food on their plate, and Obi-Wan fervently regrets the Mandalorian vendetta against small talk. 

He pauses to set his utensils down and takes a moment to catch each of the others’ eyes. It’s polite, in Mandalorian culture—but he’s also stalling for time.

“The Republic is at war,” he begins, and when Bo-Katan scoffs, he amends the statement. “No, you’re right; the Republic would  _ like _ to be at war. But the Republic has more senators than soldiers.”

“Mm. And a little birdy told you that Mandalore has a shiny new army,” Bo-Katan says.

To Obi-Wan’s left, Cody chuckles. 

“I think it’d be a little hard to deny at this point, sir,” he says dryly, and he sounds just like the man who announced Obi-Wan in the hall. Do Cody and Rex have a third, less-decorated brother?

“True. Well then, Master Kenobi, you know that Mandalorians don't hesitate to fight in other people's wars. But what is it that the Republic is prepared to offer? I’m not sure the tradeoff for soldiers and senators is one-to-one on Mandalore.” Bo-Katan’s smile is sharper than her knife. She cuts into the ribs on her plate and raises an eyebrow across the table. 

“We’re willing to pay, of course. We understand that Mandalorian mercenaries—and, I’m sure, Mandalorian soldiers—don’t come cheap.”

“Payment is not what's up for negotiation, and you know it. Tell me,  _ Negotiator _ : what else is the Republic willing to part with?”

The table between them may be a symbolic level ground, but Obi-Wan knows that he is at a distinct disadvantage in the way of bargaining chips. Satine knows it, Bo-Katan knows it, and, based on the bright and assessing Force presences of the soldiers beside him, Cody and Rex know it as well. They all agreed to an audience with him, though, so there must be something that they want. Obi-Wan just has to find it. 

He leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other, gesturing carelessly upwards with one hand: the picture of nonchalance.

“I thought we might start with intergalactic trade deals and see how we feel from there,” he says with a wink, and Satine rolls her eyes.

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you,” she says smiling, but her nostalgia doesn't hold her back during the negotiations.

It’s a brutal debate. Obi-Wan pulls on every trick he’s learned that brought him the title of Negotiator, and he uses a few he invents there and then. Every member of the table wants something different and impossible, and he has to be careful not to cross a line that would alienate the Senate. Still, Obi-Wan gets the distinct feeling they  _ want _ to join the war. He just has to give them a good enough reason.

The first sticking point is, unsurprisingly, the matter of conquered territory. The right of the victor to the spoils is not uniquely Mandalorian, but it is one of their guiding principles, and this whole sector was once ruled by the Mand'alor. Bo-Katan insists on Mandalore earning sovereign right to conquered territories, and Obi-Wan thinks that’s rather counter to the whole purpose of the war.

“We aren’t fighting the Separatists to determine which invading force gets to plant their flag where,” Obi-Wan says, and there’s a touch of ire in his tone. “We’re fighting to preserve the right of self-governance for all planets.”

“Wait—‘we’? Will the Jedi fight?” Rex asks, leaning forward.

“Yes; we don't just carry these sabers around for show, you know.”

Satine sets her glass down on the table with a too-loud thump. It’s the first time Obi-Wan has seen her surprised since he’s arrived on planet. “Wait, since when are the Jedi a militant arm of the Republic?”

To the ever-warring Mandalorians, the Jedi fighting for something other than lofty ideals would be a positive. To Obi-Wan, as much as it’s been necessary these last few years, he knows that it’s a sign of the Jedi moving further from the neutral path they once walked. He looks down at his mostly-untouched plate.

“We’ve had to become more realistic recently,” he says, and he knows his voice has fallen a little flat. “When the Separatist threat has been dealt with, I’m sure we will return to being peacekeepers in a less combative fashion.”

Bo-Katan snorts, but she directs the conversation back to the issue of territory rights without further comment. They grudgingly settle on a percentage of any uninhabited worlds being taken into Mandalorian custody. Rex adds a second, surprising stipulation: that any inhabited worlds be given the option of Mandalorian oversight, and that any displaced—orphaned—children be offered the chance to become a foundling. He feels sharp and determined in the Force, and Obi-Wan can’t help but wonder if these two (three?) brothers are foundlings themselves. A surge of adopted children could explain how Mandalorian’s army has grown so quickly, but from  _ where _ ?

After working through trade rights, tariffs, sovereignty, and foundlings, the candles have burnt to pale yellow snubs on the candelabras, and the remains of the food have gone cold. They had started at second meal, and yet the light through the stained glass windows is starting to burn a deeper yellow. The waitstaff have kept the glasses full of water, but Obi-Wan can see the blue-green glass bottles of _tihaar_ , a pale liquor with little red fruits bobbing at the top, waiting at a nearby table for the end of negotiations. He won’t become overconfident, but he thinks he can feel an agreement approaching. There's an eagerness in the air, a thrumming like the baying of Mandalorian bloodhounds.

“Master Kenobi, you said earlier that the Jedi would fight,” Cody says, and Obi-Wan realizes that Cody is the only one who hasn't made a stipulation. "But you haven't said in what capacity. Infantry? Commandos? Espionage?"

With regret, Obi-Wan resigns himself to waiting a little while longer for the  _ tihaar _ .

“Ah,” he says, and Cody’s already-piercing gaze sharpens. “The Republic has requested that any hired forces be directed by a neutral, peacekeeping party. The Senate is insisting on at least the equivalent of civilian control of the military, and Chancellor Palpatine—”

Satine whistles, low, three steps ahead as usual. “Are the Jedi now an authority on both the moral and the militant? Goodness, Obi-Wan. I had no idea the Force leant itself to such varied expertise.”

“You want to put Jedi in charge of Mandalorian troops?” Cody asks, and Obi-Wan can practically feel himself diminishing in Cody’s esteem. 

“No, actually,” Obi-Wan says, “that isn’t what I want. Jedi are formidable, but most of us are hardly trained in strategic military command.”

“What, then? You wouldn’t have brought it to the table if you didn’t mean to argue it,” Cody says, and Obi-Wan is starting to see how this perceptive, focused mind could have earned a place in the Mand’alor’s confidence. He hadn’t planned on giving up so much ground so early on this particular point, but he knows he has to act quickly before he loses Cody completely. It isn’t yet clear why Satine invited a commander and a captain to the table, but it  _ is _ clear that she values their opinions. He takes a deep breath.

“There’s no easy way to say this. The Chancellor has told me that he won’t accept anything less than the Jedi as the highest ranked officers.  _ But _ . Most of the Jedi hardly want to be in the position of directing troop movements and garrisoning, and I doubt the Senate will be more involved in the inner workings of the army than reviewing reports.”

“Are you proposing a smokescreen?” Bo-Katan asks, and her eyebrows are almost at the edge of her metal hairpiece. Obi-Wan fights a wince.

“I'm proposing some very specific legalese. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the only Mandalorian rank above Marshal Commander is yours: the Al’Ori’Ramikade,” Obi-Wan says, and he forges on when Bo-Katan nods. “Here's what I suggest: we create the Coruscanti rank of General for the Jedi, but we have it mean very little in the field.”

“And when we need to disobey a Jedi’s orders?” Rex asks.

“You will be free to do so and are encouraged to send the Jedi to me.” Obi-Wan swallows, uncomfortable with the deception despite having devised it. “It is my hope that that will be a rare occurrence. There are very few of us left, and, regardless of our strategical expertise, I’m sure you Mandalorians know that we Jedi can be formidable opponents.”

Satine shakes her head with a disbelieving huff, but when she raises her head, she’s smiling. “You truly have become more ‘realistic’ lately, haven’t you, Obi-Wan? Well. The officers and I will need some time to consider organizational structure, but it’s a good idea. Diplomacy and efficiency rarely go hand-in-hand.”

She falls silent and looks at Cody, and the weight of a full conversation hangs in the air between them. At last, Satine seems to find what she’s looking for. She nods and turns back to Obi-Wan.

“One last thing. Obi-Wan, you’ll be acting as the Republic ambassador to Mandalore throughout the duration of the war. There is something we need that only a Jedi can do.”

“I would be honored to assist the Mand’alor however I can,” Obi-Wan says, choosing his words carefully, and he feels a frisson of  _ something _ when both Satine and Cody smile. 

At that, footsteps echo behind him. When he looks up, one of the waitstaff is pouring  _ tihaar  _ into a short glass to his right. Around him, everyone at the table is grinning in anticipation. Obi-Wan gets the distinct impression of hunters tightening their bow strings, getting ready to ride. Satine lifts her glass to the center of the table, and her officers follow suit.

“That’s as much as we can do tonight. The actual monetary cost is something your Republic will have to work out with our Treasurer,” she says. “For now— _ k’oyacyi _ !”

“ _ K’oyacyi _ ,” Obi-wan echoes, and he thinks that the Mandalorian cheers of ‘stay alive’ has never been so apt. 

As they knock their drinks back, there's a curt rap at the door. At Satine's nod, the guards admit a soldier in armor painted almost entirely in red, with a black visor on his helmet and a black  _ kama _ around his waist. He snaps off a quick salute, and Satine beckons him forward. With a glance at Obi-Wan, the man removes his helmet as he steps close to Satine to whisper in her ear. After a second's thought, Satine nods, and he snaps his bucket back on and jogs back out.

Obi-Wan stares at the doors for a long second after they close. The man had been the spitting image of Cody and Rex. He breathes out. Okay, identical twins are common enough. Triplets, all in the military? It's not unheard of. But Obi-Wan is drawing the line at  _ quadruplets _ .

“Hold on,” he says, flicking his eyes between Captain Rex and Commander Cody. The two of them slowly, almost unwillingly, start to grin. Obi-Wan thinks back to how uniform the troops arrayed in the audience hall and on the landing pad had been. In hindsight, the uniformity hadn't been a trick of good training at all; every soldier had been the exact same height and almost the exact same build. 

Obi-Wan has to pause to gather his wits. 

“I must apologize for the intrusion into personal matters, but Captain—Commander—exactly how many brothers do you have?” he asks.

“About two million,” Rex says, and Cody adds, “Give or take.”

Obi-Wan turns to Satine with his eyebrows raised, and her smile has teeth. 

“Walk with me,” Satine says, standing up. “There are some things you should know.”

The  _ tihaar _ sits warm in his stomach as he stands, his wooden chair scraping the floor as he does. Satine takes his arm when he passes her, and she gently turns them towards a door nestled into an alcove by the balcony. An open-air skyway takes them beyond the central palace building alongside a courtyard overflowing with greens and blues. The warm orange-gold rays of the setting sun catch on plum trees laden with fruit and shallow pools of water. It’s beautiful, and efficient: a source of food and water if the palace were to come under siege. 

Beyond the edge of the garden area, there is a square-paved area perhaps forty feet on one side, and it is full of identical teenagers training with long wooden staves. Limping between their neat rows is a short man wearing sand-gold armor and gesturing animatedly. Even from this distance, Obi-Wan can both hear the man’s angry shouts and sense the fierce love he has for his students.

Satine squeezes his arm, and when he turns, she’s gazing down at the courtyard with a softer smile on her face than Obi-Wan has seen in a long time. She looks back at him with satisfaction in her soul.

"When I first started trying to rebuild Mandalore," she says at last, "I sought the advice of one of our leaders before the civil war. Sure, he’d been declared dead, but that's a common occurrence for Mandalorian Primes. I thought there was a reasonable certainty that, if he was alive, he'd want to help rebuild Mandalore into a fighting force worthy of our history. I didn’t find him, but I found something close enough."

“Let me guess: two million somethings 'close enough'?” Obi-Wan asks, and Satine's smile sharpens.

“Yes. And with them, I found someone who wanted, more than anything, to keep the Mandalorian spirit alive and thriving in the boys he was training. A true  _ Mando'ad. I _ told him that if he worked with me, not a single one of the clones would lose their Mandalorian soul.” At that, her smile shifts into a wolfish grin. “You aren’t the only negotiator who knows how to seal a deal, Obi-Wan.”

The sun at last slips fully beyond the horizon, and darkness falls over the courtyard in visibly quickening degrees. Around them, the stones of the castle and the skyway fade from warm silver to a darker gray. Obi-Wan pulls his attention from the boys below to stare incredulously at his old friend.

“Wait, I’m sorry, Satine, did you—did you steal two million clones?”

“‘Steal’, Obi-Wan? You can’t steal free-willed people." Satine laughs. "No, my dear. Kal sent me the access codes for every landing pad, door, and defense network the Kaminoans had, and we shut it all down. I don’t think even their automatic toilets were working by the time we walked through their front doors. After that, well. We had a nice chat with the clones, and we killed every single Kaminoan that tried to stop any of us from walking back out.”

“...I see. I’d heard the cloning facilities on Kamino were destroyed a few years ago, was that you?"

“Not us, actually,” Satine shrugs, and Obi-Wan wonders what these people had been like for Satine to be so unmoved by their deaths. “But it’s not like they had much left to destroy. We’d taken everything worth having.”

Beneath them, the older man calls a halt, and the trainees instantly transform from lines of diligent soldiers to clusters of laughing teenagers. They tussle and shout, moving towards tables that are stacked with some sort of lemon-yellow cake. There’s a wellspring of profound pride and joy coming from both Satine and the trainer, and Obi-Wan can’t help but bask in the feeling before turning the situation over in his mind.

“Well, I can’t argue with the results,” Obi-Wan says, deep in thought, and he brings his hand up to stroke his beard. “And I’m glad they’re in your hands and not someone else’s. This is still worrisome, though. Why would the Kaminoans make so many? Just to sell them to the highest bidder when a war broke out?”

The look Satine gives him is assessing, almost critical. 

"They'd already been paid for, Obi-Wan," she says, and he knows he's missing something, but he has no idea what.

"By whom?" he asks, but she shakes her head and looks out over the courtyard beneath them, still echoing with the boys' laughter.

"That's the question, isn't it," she says, and they leave it at that.

Shortly thereafter, Obi-Wan makes his excuses and retires to the guest quarters. His room is spartan, with only a bed, a dresser, and a small private refresher. However, although the Mandalorians as a general rule dislike excess, they have a love of quality. The quilt on the bed is finely woven, and the rug in the center of the room is soft and thick beneath his feet. It’s better accommodation than the vast majority of the places Obi-Wan has stayed.

He settles cross-legged on the rug and calms his emotions, reaching deep for the smooth current of the Force. His breathing slows until he can feel the little eddies of the Force brushing against him and tugging his thoughts one way and another. It feels—complicated. Not bad, and not necessarily disturbed, but turbulent. Obi-Wan gets the distinct impression of a river that has been redirected and is slowly but surely carving its way back to its intended track.

“If you’re sure,” Obi-Wan murmurs, and he sinks further into his meditation with a sense of relief.

-—-

As he’s preparing to leave the next day, Obi-Wan hears two sharp raps at his door. Cody and Satine are waiting in the hall, both in full armor with their helmets tucked under their right arms. They step into the room when Obi-Wan steps back, and the door closes softly behind them.

“I presume you have another stipulation for the Senate?” Obi-Wan asks, folding his hands into his sleeves and reaching for his negotiator mask.

Satine interrupts him. “Not for the Senate, actually. For you.” 

She looks serious, far from the playful woman she tends to become when they’re alone together. 

“There’s something very strange happening in the Senate and the Republic,” she begins, and she holds up her hand when Obi-Wan opens his mouth to protest. “And I wouldn’t care, but I think it involves the clones. If there's a hidden plot that could in any way hurt my men, I want my best people looking for it. Cody’s our best, and I still consider you the Jedi's best, Obi-Wan. I'm assigning you to the 212th.”

Obi-Wan swallows a faint burst of happiness at the praise, and he bows to Cody to hide anything on his face that might give him away.

“I'd be honored to fight alongside you, Commander Cody.”

“And I you, Master Kenobi," Cody says, a twist of humor in his voice, and he gives a half-bow in return.

Satine smiles like she's ticking a box. "Take care of each other, you two. Actually... based on past experience, I take that back. Cody, take care of Obi-Wan, please. It’s one of the few things he’s terrible at.”

Over the sound of Obi-Wan’s protests, Cody solemnly promises to try, but neither of them can help grinning once Satine starts to laugh. With the two of them sure and steady before him, Obi-Wan reaches out into the Force, and it surrounds him with a sense of rightness that feels like joy.

-—-

After spending the entire journey back to Coruscant rehearsing his case for the Senate, Obi-Wan is shocked when he enters the Senate chambers and finds that the Chancellor has already accepted each of Satine’s terms. Around him, relieved chatter fills the auditorium, and the Chancellor casts an approving, grandfatherly smile down to where Obi-Wan stands, blinking and speechless. 

“I thank the Senate for its wisdom in granting me emergency powers to authorize an army,” Palpatine says. “Rest assured that I will step back the instant the Separatist threat has passed. However, there would be no army to authorize without the quick-thinking of one of our best defenders. Please join me in thanking Master—no,  _ General _ —Kenobi for securing our best hope for victory.”

The sound of applause, immediate and overwhelming, washes over Obi-Wan. Satine’s words of warning ring in his ears almost as loud as the noise. Is it strange that Palpatine did not insist on further negotiation? Or is it simply a sign of the Senate’s desperation to stop the Separatists? Obi-Wan bows, letting his hood obscure his creased eyebrows, but he doesn’t have much time to worry.

They have a war to win.


	2. Chapter 2

Planning strategy with Cody quickly becomes the only tolerable piece of the war effort. The clean chrome walls of the  _ Negotiator _ don’t feel anything like home yet, but Obi-Wan’s quarters are a little warmer with Commander Cody sitting across from him, tapping a stylus idly against the datapad in his lap. Obi-Wan sends a few notated maps towards his commander’s screen with a flick, and he waits patiently while Cody reviews his notes.

“You’re not so bad at this, you know,” Cody says, looking up. “You undersold yourself.”

“I’ve picked up a few tricks here and there,” Obi-Wan replies with a wink and a smile, and,  _ oh _ . There’s a pulse of warmth in the Force like cinnamon, like some sweet-hot spice, but it's there and gone too quickly for Obi-Wan to place it. He glances at Cody for a hint, but Cody is the picture of steady professionalism as he circles a few things on the datapad and adds a few notes of his own. 

He'll figure it out eventually, he's sure. They work well as officers, almost impossibly so, but they're still learning how they fit together.

At first, it had taken a while for Cody to stop being surprised when Obi-Wan insisted on leading the charge, spinning his saber through the Soresu sequences that would best protect the men behind him. Then, it took just as long for Obi-Wan to adapt the sequences into something that didn’t put him directly in front of 212th sightlines.

“We’re soldiers, General, not children,” Cody had said with a voice as dry as the desert around them. “Let us do our job so we can help you do yours.” 

Still, it’s amazing how quickly the team incorporates Obi-Wan on the field. If he didn't know better, Obi-Wan would think they’d trained to work with Jedi. Perhaps it's the Mandalorian training: maybe learning how to fight against Jedi helps you learn how to fight with them instead.

By their fourth deployment, he and Cody are moving almost as one, and the burnt sienna dirt of the planet churns beneath their feet as they advance towards the endless platoons of droids. Ghost Company just needs to hold this front long enough for the rest of the 212th to move in from the west with the AT-TEs, so Obi-Wan is being as much of a distraction as possible. His lightsaber feels like an extension of his arm as he deflects blaster fire back into the oncoming horde, and Cody is at his back, ducking between flashes of blue to snipe the ones he’s missing. They aren’t quite seamless yet; there are gaps in Obi-Wan’s coverage and stutters in Cody’s fire from failing to anticipate Obi-Wan’s movements, but. With a little training, a little practice, and a little time—they could be unstoppable. 

When Cody takes his helmet off during clean-up, grinning fiercely through the blood trickling down from his temple, Obi-Wan knows he felt it too. 

After a long visit to the medbay and a short visit to the refreshers, Cody and Obi-Wan meet for a post-mortem in Obi-Wan’s rooms. The 212th, although well-trained, is still working on rationalizing the differences between the training sims and an actual battlefield.

Obi-Wan stares at the discrepancies between their battle plans and field movements on his datapad, tallying losses in his head and rehashing what went wrong.

“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, General,” Cody says quietly, clearly picking up on Obi-Wan’s concern. Obi-Wan wonders how Cody’s already learned to read him so well; even Anakin rarely notices when Obi-Wan is worried. Living with people who look almost identical probably teaches you to pick up on minute expressions. Obi-Wan sighs.

“True," he admits, resigned. "But it’d be nice if just a little more of our plan had managed to limp through, Commander. Look, here: I should’ve been on the left flank instead of in center. I could’ve reinforced this shoulder on the final push.”

“You couldn’t have known. And part of it’s my fault: honestly, you’ve been much more impactful than expected. I need to adjust my value-weighting for Jedi.”

There's a compliment in there, Obi-Wan thinks, but maybe there shouldn't be.

“Perhaps not for all of us,” Obi-Wan says, pushing the datapad away at last, and Cody tilts his head.

“Are you not all warriors?”

“Not all supposed to be.”

At that, Cody sets his mug down, and Obi-Wan reaches over with the teapot to refill it while Cody speaks.

“My brothers and I never had another choice," he says, and even with the Force, Obi-Wan can't quite grasp how Cody feels about that. "Everything we are was designed for war. So tell me: if you weren’t raised to fight, what were you training your powers for?”

Obi-Wan exhales, pushing his trepidation out into the Force. Cody deserves the truth—or whatever pieces of it Obi-Wan has managed to muddle through. The ship hums, quiet and constant around them, while Obi-Wan marshals his thoughts.

“We're supposed to keep the peace, and to serve the will of the Force. But in reality, keeping the peace often calls for violence, and the Force's will can be difficult to interpret for even our wisest masters. It can be… frustrating.”

“Decisions are rarely so simple as doing ‘the right thing’ or ‘the wrong thing’,” Cody agrees. “And we never have perfect information, in war or in politics. It does no good to pretend otherwise.”

Obi-Wan sighs and nods, but Cody's words are reassuring. He’d been harboring doubts for so long that it’s a relief to talk to someone who isn't expecting perfection from him. It’s a relief, too, when Cody doesn’t press further. He just sets aside the data from that day’s battle and pulls up their initial strategies for the Ryloth deployment, and Obi-Wan turns his attention to the problems at hand.

-—-

Three months into the war, Satine calls Obi-Wan back to Mandalore. Half the length of the Hydian Way passes by in the blink of an eye, and Obi-Wan can feel every other soul on the  _ Negotiator _ straining towards home.

The men are grateful for a break on familiar soil. Obi-Wan leaves Cody to oversee the disembark and troop housing and goes to find Satine. The commanding officer of Mandalore’s capital city force—Commander Fox, Obi-Wan thinks, the same man who had inadvertently tipped him off to the clones—directs him to Satine’s personal quarters.

She’s bent over a writing desk when he enters, and the midday sun frames her hair and her shoulders in a soft golden light. There are a few new lines beside her eyes and a few new dents on her armor. War isn't easy even on the home front, but he wonders if the dents are from any discontent with Mandalore getting involved in galactic politics. It makes him glad, selfishly, that she's wearing armor even here, in the safety of her room, but he also knows that she must have been expecting him. Her pen picks up speed as he waits.

“Ah, Obi-Wan,” she says, putting one last flourish on the flimsi in front of her before looking up. “Good. Are you busy unloading your ship? I’d like to show you something.”

“I’m never too busy for you, Satine,” Obi-Wan says with a courteous bow, and he grins when it earns a laugh.

“Such empty flattery,” she chides as she takes his arm and leads him back into the hallway. "You never could lie to me."

Obi-Wan updates her on the 212th's progress as she guides their path back to the landing docks. He and Cody have been sending her and Bo-Katan plenty of updates on their military progress, so he fills her in on all the little details, like Boil and Waxer almost adopting a little Twi’lek girl and Gregor finding a loth cat hidden in the cargo hold.

His stories and her questions last them to the doors of a lambda-class shuttle with a waiting pilot. She ducks in first, and Obi-Wan belts himself into the seat next to hers as the door shuts behind them. The cabin hisses slightly, pressurizing for space flight, and Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow.

“We’re not going far. Just to Concordia,” Satine says, which isn’t an explanation at all.

“I wasn’t aware Mandalore’s moon had become a popular relaxation spot.”

“Well, you know Mandalorians: we're always diversifying our interests.” 

Her cheerful sarcasm melts away into solemnity as the blue steel and glass of Mandalore’s capitol drop away from the window. He turns to her, then, raising an eyebrow and expecting the worst.

“Obi-Wan, I need to be sure that what I tell you will not leave this shuttle. You may still be a medley of half-truths and hyperbole, but are you also still a man of your word?”

“Yes, I try to be,” Obi-Wan replies, and when she looks at him expectantly, he says the Mandalorian words used to seal a pact: truth, honor, vision. “ _ Haat, ijaat, haa’it _ . Satine, what is it?”

She takes a deep breath. “We lost the Darksaber.”

The bottom drops out of Obi-Wan’s stomach, and it isn’t from the artificial gravity activating. Without the Darksaber, Satine’s claim to the Mandalorian throne is in name only. She must have been waiting for a challenge to her throne since it left her custody. Without a conscious thought, Obi-Wan’s hand comes up to stroke his beard. 

“And you want me to help find it,” he guesses, and she nods. “It was on Concordia?”

“ _ Pre Vizsla _ was on Concordia, and we’re fairly certain he’s the one who stole it. He made no secret of wanting the Mand’alor title, but he was too much of a coward to challenge me directly. He and Death Watch—a highly religious, orthodox sect of Mandalore—left the moon at the same time the saber went missing. I need you to use the Force to point us in the right direction; it is a lightsaber, after all.”

Unease sits heavy in Obi-Wan’s mind. Finding the Darksaber, especially without the consent of the Council or the Senate, is definitely crossing some sort of line. Can it be justified? This is technically part of the Republic’s agreement with Mandalore for an army, and helping to keep Satine stay on the throne would improve Mandalorian political stability. Although it’s logical, it still feels like a justification that Obi-Wan is making on behalf of Satine. He needs to be careful.

“I’ll do my best, Satine, but tracking was never my strong suit,” he says at last.

“I know, but I’m not about to pull Quinlan Vos into this,” Satine says, and Obi-Wan chokes on a surprised laugh. “The man couldn’t keep his mouth shut in a locust swarm.”

After they land, she takes him to an abandoned mine that stretches deep beneath the planet’s surface. Whoever had used it as a base of operations had done a poor job of camouflage: there are still crates of weapons and discarded pieces of armor littering the floor, interspersed between drills and massive tumblers. Obi-Wan walks the lengths of the rooms, reaching out for the echoes of the people who had been here last. He bends to pick up half of a broken cuirass, the beaten metal edges rough on his bare fingers, and he glimpses fear and anger and a resounding sort of triumph in the Force. That triumph, and the impatience that undercuts it, seems to prove Satine’s theory correct. 

“I can’t get much,” he says, letting the cuirass drop. “But I think you’re right. If you give me a rough timeline, I can start quietly hunting through Republic flight records. If they passed through Republic space even once, we'll find it.”

He turns to find her close behind him, smiling faintly in the dim light of the mine’s emergency lighting.

“My knight in shining armor come to save the day once again,” she says, brushing a bit of dirt from the front of Obi-Wan’s robes. “Or rather, my padawan in roughspun cotton.”

Obi-Wan’s breath catches when she moves her hand up to cup his jaw and runs her thumb along the edge of his beard.

“See something you like?” he asks, and he’s proud that his voice barely shakes. She’s always had this effect on him; he had hoped that he could master the feeling better with age, but his heart is still tripping over itself in his chest. 

“Hmm. I'm not sure about the beard. But I think it’s growing on me.”

“Then I guess it can keep growing on me."

Obi-Wan winks to cover his genuine blush, and Satine scoffs and shoves lightly at his shoulder. 

“Flattery alone won’t find the Darksaber,” she says, smiling. “Let’s get to work.”

With the aid of the Force, they find enough broken ship pieces in the hangar to narrow down the type of ship they need to look for, but they don’t find anything else useful in Vizsla’s abandoned base. When they touch back down on Mandalore, the sun is dipping below the horizon, and Cody is waiting for Satine with reports of his own. Obi-Wan begs off joining them for dinner, as much as he’d like to: he desperately needs to meditate. His unease over the Darksaber—and Satine—and  _ Cody _ , come to think of it—is a storm in his heart.

Reaching the peace required for meditation is harder than usual that night, and he doesn’t find any new answers.

-—-

Their respite doesn't last long. Obi-Wan and the 212th are back in space only a few days later, hunting down General Grievous on Cato Neimoidia. The city itself is a spiral of pristine, sharp-cut skyscrapers dripping out from a glittering central nexus. It looks like what Coruscant might’ve been at its start: a highly technical city with a rapidly expanding population.

On the bridge overlooking the viewport, Obi-Wan can admit that he’s glad to be working with the 501st on this one. More than a year into the war, and he knows they’ve all earned new scars. The fighting hasn’t seemed to wear on Anakin so much as the endless crush of bureaucracy has; if anything, he seems to be burning brighter than ever in the Force. He’s reckless, as he has always been, and Obi-Wan is intent on keeping that recklessness from transitioning into dangerous overconfidence. 

Ahsoka has been helping with that, a bit. Seeing her grow into both her powers and her unique brand of wisdom has been its own delight. 

The Jedi aren't the only ones happy to be reunited. When Obi-Wan walks into the Mess, he finds his commander surrounded by boys in blue, joking and tussling with them like any natborn family would. He catches Cody’s eye just after Cody manages to pull Rex into a headlock, and Cody scrubs his knuckles through Rex’s blond buzz cut before releasing him and jogging over.

“I didn’t mean to pull you away from your brothers,” Obi-Wan says, smiling. “Or to allow Rex to escape any well-earned retribution.”

“It’s no problem, General. I’ll catch him again after sitrep.”

Cody falls into step with him as easy as breathing on their way to the war room, his Force presence even steadier than usual, and Obi-Wan looks over knowingly.

“It’s always a joy to be back with our younger brothers, hm? And a relief to be able to keep an eye on them.”

“To keep them away from experimental ordinances, more like.”

Obi-Wan laughs. “Rex, too? Goodness, I thought it was just Anakin.”

“Putting them together was a mistake, clearly. Is there any way Commander Tano will be a calming influence?”

“Not in the least. Ahsoka’s going to be a right terror of a Jedi.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Obi-Wan catches a glimpse of a wry smile.

“It seems like the best ones are, sir,” Cody says.

That warm cinnamon spice blossoms in Force again, and Obi-Wan is starting to think he might know what it is. Attraction isn’t something that Obi-Wan is used to, per se, but it’s something that he’s learned how to gently set it aside. For the moment, though, it doesn’t look like he’ll need to. Cody hasn’t changed his professional demeanor a single iota, and he is, as ever, steady and competent at Obi-Wan’s side.

Obi-Wan is instantly grateful for this one easy thing amidst a sea of difficulty.

Unfortunately, their high spirits from reuniting with the 501st are quickly dampened by the realities of the war at hand. Cody briefs him on the joint resource capacities of the 501st and the 212th, and then they spend five hellish hours reviewing what the Chancellor expects from their battalions. Midway through, they have to relocate to Obi-Wan’s quarters for ration bars and two pots of tea. 

Obi-Wan can tell that Cody’s getting frustrated, and, if he’s honest, he can feel red-hot pinpricks of anger crawling up his own spine. For every victory they claw back from impossible odds, the Chancellor seems to cut their resources in half. Their access to artillery, troops, specops, and tech is dwindling at an exponential rate, replaced with growing restrictions on tactics the Chancellor says cause too much “collateral damage”. It’s almost as if he wants a stalemate instead of a victory.

Cody breaks first, tossing his datapad down. “The Chancellor does know he ordered a war, right, and not a diplomatic ball? The Shi-Torun waltz wasn’t in our training manuals.”

Obi-Wan looks across the little table they use for their meetings, and he tries to return Cody’s tired grin. He knows it falls flat when Cody reaches over to press Obi-Wan's datapad down as well, a new determination in his eyes. 

“Alright, I’m calling for a strategic retreat," he says.

“Pardon?”

“Get some sleep, General. Anything we do now will just be a mistake that’ll take more time to fix later; trust me.”

Obi-Wan sits up a little straighter, shaking his head as if to shake off his exhaustion. This is  _ important _ . He shouldn’t have let his concentration slip.

“I think we’re almost there," he insists. "You go on. I just need a little bit longer… I can use the Force to release some of the fatigue.”

Cody raises an eyebrow at him and stands, unconvinced. 

“No, Obi-Wan. Even Jedi get tired, and you can’t fix a problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. You have to acknowledge your limitations to overcome them.”

The statement rings true, and Obi-Wan is honestly too tired to say something trite about the Force not having any limitations at all. He releases his hold on his datapad grudgingly before stretching his arms back over his head. The resounding cracks that follow make him wince more out of embarrassment than the pain.

Suddenly, Obi-Wan feels fingers digging into his shoulders and thumbs pressing into the meat of his back, and he gasps. He hadn’t even seen Cody move.

“You can’t release knots like these into the Force,” Cody says dryly, and Obi-Wan’s head rolls forward without his volition: equal parts pain and relief. He should tell Cody to—to stop. The feeling of warm admiration fills the Force around them in turbulent eddies, and Obi-Wan needs to find his distance. Before he can open his mouth, though, Cody slides one hand around the back of Obi-Wan’s neck. His fingers press lightly on one side while his thumb tucks into the hollow beneath Obi-Wan’s ear, and Obi-Wan’s mind falls completely, blessedly silent.

“Get some  _ rest _ , Obi-Wan,” Cody says. “I’ll know if you don’t.”

“Yes, Cody,” Obi-Wan says, almost automatically, and Cody lifts his hand and turns to leave.

On any other night, Obi-Wan would stay up and comb the plans for weaknesses at least once more. He fully intends to, honestly, but there’s this sense in the back of his mind—this fledgling awareness—that Cody really would know. Not only that, but that Cody would be right: that Obi-Wan would make mistakes. With a wry smile and a weary sigh, Obi-Wan tells the ship’s computer to cut the lights. 

He falls asleep with the phantom warmth of Cody’s hand a half circle around his neck.

—-

On the anniversary of the treaty signing between Mandalore and the Republic, the 212th is called home.

That first night, Obi-Wan sits down to dinner with Satine and Cody, and he doesn’t need the Force to know that this won’t be a social call. At first, he wonders if this is about the Darksaber. They had followed some promising leads the first few weeks, but Obi-Wan had ultimately left the extended game of cat-and-mouse in the Mandalorians’ competent hands. They were hunters; they hunted. Still, they hadn’t been able to pin Viszla down just yet, and Obi-Wan has been waiting to be called back into the hunting party.

They sit down to eat in Satine’s audience chambers, and Obi-Wan is frankly grateful for the more casual space. The floor has a thick rug, and there are knit tapestries on each of the walls depicting various Mandalorian victories—each filled with nameless, faceless soldiers in every color of armor. The Mandalorians never did care for individual glory. 

A roasted hunk of shatual sits squarely in the middle of the table, and Obi-Wan wonders if he’ll need to ask to borrow a knife in order to eat. Before he can, Cody flips out his vibroblade and starts carving into the meat, laying out slices on each of their plates in short order.

“I take it that you didn’t call us back simply to enjoy Mandalorian cuisine?” Obi-Wan asks once Satine starts eating, and he wonders absently when he adopted the Mandalorian habit of getting straight to the point. Perhaps it’s simply an effect of war, where time is one of the few things credits can’t buy.

“No, though you clearly need to eat more. Hm. Well, there’s no tactful way to say this, Obi-Wan, but there’s something the Jedi Council isn’t telling you. About the clones.”

Obi-Wan feels his eyebrows rise almost to his hairline, and he puts his fork down. 

“I find that hard to believe,” he says. The Jedi Council isn’t perfect, but its failings are more to do with bureaucracy than intentional malice. Obi-Wan’s sure. 

Satine gives him a tight smile. “Which is harder to believe: that the Council is keeping secrets, or that the Jedi commissioned the clones?”

If Obi-Wan had still been holding his fork, he would’ve dropped it. As it is, he just drops his jaw. 

“That’s impossible. We wouldn’t—we  _ couldn’t _ ,” he says, shocked out of eloquence. 

Across the table, Cody is watching him intently, and Obi-Wan realizes he’s looking for reactions. For  _ tells _ .

“Do you recognize the name Sifo-Dyas?” Cody asks, and Obi-Wan shakes his head. “He was on your Jedi Council, decades ago. He was the one who first commissioned the Kaminoans.”

Obi-Wan can feel in the Force that they don't think they're lying, but they must be  _ mistaken _ . He shakes his head again.

“A member of the Jedi Council commissioning an army is—there's no way. Ethical conflicts aside, he couldn't have afforded it.  _ I’m _ a member of the Council, and the most it gets me is a third set of robes and reasonably good tea.”

At that, Cody and Satine trade an exasperated look. By this point, they've both been exposed to his opinions on tea.

“We don't think he did it alone. And we don't think you were in on this,” Satine reassures him, and Obi-Wan realizes that they’ve been verifying that latter across the past year. They’d known all along who commissioned the clones, but they’re only just now cluing him in.  _ Kriff _ . What else has he missed? “Honestly, it was only when I saw your surprise—since you’re still terrible at lying to me—that I thought the clones might not be the latest step in Jedi militarization. We had copied some of the Tipoca City mainframes before they were destroyed, and I had our slicers do some digging into those and the treasury records for the Republic and the Council.”

“You—Satine, that’s in violation of so many galactic laws—”

“And in all those records, I didn't find a single taxpayer or Jedi credit that went to Kamino prior to last year.”

Obi-Wan sits back, outmaneuvered from disbelief to curiosity. “Did you find who paid for them?”

Cody taps on his datapad a few times, and the holoprojector in the center of the table lights up blue. Blue rays shine upwards, coalescing into a flickering, distorted, but vaguely familiar hooded figure.

“Thank you, Nala Se,” says a voice that Obi-Wan would know in any language, in any context, with any level of audio degradation. Old, with a distinctly Coruscanti accent that rings of prestige and carefully-cultivated disdain. “The training results of the Alpha class look promising indeed. Please proceed with the development of the commandos.”

Obi-Wan looks up from the holoprojection in shock. 

“ _ Dooku _ paid for the clones? Leader of the Separatists, almost certainly a Sith Lord,  _ that  _ Count Dooku?” he asks when he can form words again. His brain is making connections before he can fully rationalize them, and each realization feels like a blow from an AT-TE cannon. “Oh, Force. He must’ve been the one who destroyed Kamino. Covering his tracks.”

Cody shrugs a single shoulder and then smiles with a few too many teeth. He doesn’t tend to talk about Kamino much. “Well, like Satine said. Nothing important burned.”

Silence rests between them for one second, then two, then Satine sighs and reaches for the  _ tihaar _ .

“Look, we don’t know if adopting the clones stopped Dooku's plans or merely slowed them down. There’s a trap in here somewhere, and Obi-Wan? This might be one trap you don’t want to spring. ...But we thought you should know.”

Obi-Wan mulls that over, thinking about the implications of Dooku providing the initial funding and guidance for the clones—and then starting a war against them, a decade later. Was this before he fell? Had the Jedi truly sanctioned creating an army? For what purpose? 

He hadn’t asked enough questions when the Republic decided to go to war. Perhaps it’s time to start.

“We’ll figure this out, won't we?" he asks quietly. "Together."

He puts his hand palm-up on the table in a gesture of supplication, and Satine reaches out to cover his hand with hers, and Cody’s hand immediately covers both of theirs. Firelight catches in Satine’s blonde hair, and it matches the fire burning steadily in Cody’s eyes.

“Yes,” Satine says. 

“ _ Yes _ ,” Cody echoes.

Obi-Wan believes them. More than that: he believes  _ in  _ them, to a degree that should be more worrisome than it is. Considering the breadth and depth of the bombshells that were dropped on him tonight, though, he has enough things to worry about.

He watches them leave together at the end of the night with his heart in his throat, feeling like a piece of himself is wandering off with them.

-—-

The war escalates in scale as neither side manages to pull ahead. Obi-Wan is stretched to his limits with managing the 7th Sky Corps, Anakin’s increasing recklessness, and his own growing doubts about the Jedi Order’s involvement. He and Cody have become formidable, as he had known they would, and the 212th is ever-steady at his back. Relying on them is a relief when he has to keep fighting despite looking for conspiracy in every order.

His increased scrutiny of orders has led to his battalion becoming well-known for creative problem-solving—and for failing to follow orders from people too far from the battlefield to know what they’re talking about. Obi-Wan won’t say it outloud, but it’s easier to disobey direct orders when he knows that Cody gets the final call regardless. If there’s trouble to be had, Obi-Wan would much rather be the one to fall on the sword of mindless bureaucracy. 

As a result, meetings with Council members get progressively more difficult. They’ve just dropped out of hyperspace near Saleucami when Obi-Wan and Cody get updated mission parameters from Ki-Adi-Mundi, courtesy of Chancellor Palpatine: damage to the planet’s marshes would cause irrevocable environmental harm, so stealth entry is forbidden. A full-frontal assault on the Separatist bases must be the 212th’s priority.

“But that’s a suicide order,” Obi-Wan says, aghast. The Separatists already have the advantage of guerilla forces hidden in the dense foliage of the swamps, and Ghost Company’s initial recce indicated almost a dozen bases hidden beneath some of the shallow mires. “There’s the easy way, the hard way, and the  _ impossible _ .”

“Impossible hasn’t stopped you before,” Ki-Adi-Mundi says, mild and unmoved, even though he must be chafing at the rigid control of the politicians as well. “These orders are directly from the Chancellor, so try to actually follow these ones.”

Obi-Wan acquiesces on the call then locks eyes with Cody through Ki-Adi-Mundi’s fading holoprojection. Cody wordlessly tilts his head, the kind of movement that would be visible while wearing a helmet, and Obi-Wan opens his clenched fists to cut his hand to the side: No. He’s getting better at that kind of communication, too.

In the LAAT/i headed down to Saleucami, Obi-Wan feels a wave of tiredness wash over him, and it isn’t due entirely to a lack of sleep. He knows that this particular decision will likely land him in front of the Senate, and he’s running out of pretty words to soothe their political consciences. Keeping the pretense of the Jedi leading the GAR has been more difficult lately, honestly. He’s already used up a lot of his influence in keeping Jedi egos in check, and claiming full responsibility for direct disobedience won’t do him any favors with anyone.

Exhaustion overwhelms him. He blinks hard to stay awake, and, desperate, he reaches out to the Force for whatever energy it can give. The second he does, Cody straightens on the bench next to him, almost as if he feels it. When Obi-Wan turns to check, Cody is unsnapping the shoulder pauldron closest to Obi-Wan, and the other troopers kindly, almost smugly, avert their eyes.

And Obi-Wan isn’t going to—he  _ isn’t _ ; it’d be unprofessional, and the men deserve a strong general—but then Cody fits his hand around the nape of Obi-Wan’s neck. His firm but gentle grip tugs Obi-Wan’s head down to rest on Cody’s shoulder, and then it’s easier to just close his eyes. 

Just for a little while. Just until they land.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback absolutely loved <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for both the Rako Hardeen arc and the Pong Krell arc are coming up.

They retake Saleucami in direct opposition to the Chancellor’s orders. Despite the victory, the mood is tense on the _Negotiator_ on the return to Coruscant, and Obi-Wan can feel his men wishing they could protect him from whatever judgment the Republic might pass. 

Unfortunately, not even katarn armor can protect against a court martial.

He’s called to a High Council meeting the second their ship enters the Coruscanti atmosphere. The fallout isn’t as bad as it could be—just a formal reprimand—but it’s clear that the Council is starting to worry about Obi-Wan’s allegiance. If Obi-Wan’s being honest, they have good reason for it; he’s a little worried, too.

Mace Windu draws him aside after the meeting adjourns, and Obi-Wan knows that this is where the true punishment comes in.

“Obi-Wan, you already know what I’m going to say,” Mace says, and his raised eyebrow is full of the kind of judgment that only he can deliver.

Obi-Wan smiles politely and tucks his white-knuckled hands into the sleeves of his robes. “I might be able to hazard a guess.”

They turn and walk together through the hallowed halls of the Jedi Temple, its arched windows overlooking a city swarming with lives yet untouched by the war. Their footsteps trace the same paths they had two decades ago, when Obi-Wan, young and fearless, had sought Mace’s help with the 7th and most aggressive lightsaber form. Obi-Wan hopes Mace hasn’t forgotten their shared proficiency in controlled, purposeful aggression.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” Mace says. “The Council is grateful for the victories you’ve brought to the Republic, but your methods have been…”

“Unorthodox?”

“Bordering on treason,” Mace says, sending Obi-Wan a pointed glare. “Look, you’re disobeying direct orders, you’re spending a lot of time on Mandalore, and anyone can see that you’re getting a little too close to the clones in your command.”

Obi-Wan has to breathe his instant, knee-jerk irritation into the Force before he can speak. “I would think that, as the Republic’s ambassador to Mandalore and as a GAR general, those latter two might not seem so strange.”

Mace takes a sharp right at that moment, leading them down a quieter, emptier hallway, and the sounds of the younglings fade into distant shouts. For a terrible second, Obi-Wan instinctually checks that his lightsaber is on his belt, and Mace doesn’t miss the motion. Mace’s eyes are dark with warning when he leans forward.

“You’ve got to be more careful, old friend,” Mace says, low and serious. “The Dark Side is getting stronger in Coruscant. We've got an undercover assignment for you, and I need you to accept it without any of your usual _modifications_."

So Mace had noticed something was wrong. Obi-Wan tucks that thought away and straightens his spine. "I've completed plenty of successful undercover missions this past year, Mace."

“Nothing like this. We’ve caught whispers of a plot on the Chancellor’s life, but we need a man on the inside. None of our intelligence assets can even get close.”

“And what do you need from me?”

“We need you to die, Obi-Wan,” Mace says, grim, and Obi-Wan blinks at him.

“I _beg_ your pardon—”

“Oh, shove it. If suddenly you go missing, the terrorist cell will suspect anyone and everyone of being you in disguise. But if we fake your death, well. Dead men are less likely to be informants.”

They’ve walked the length of the hallway by this point, the leather of their boots soft and soundless on the tile floor. The quiet of the Temple feels like a thin veneer of peace, and Obi-Wan thinks that dying for the Republic would be the least that the Council has asked of him so far.

“Mm. I can’t fault your logic,” he says, noncommittal. Mace rolls his eyes. “But I know you, and I know the Council. What about this plan do you think I would—what’s the phrase you used—‘modify’?” 

"Two things. First, due to the success of the 212th, the Chancellor had previously suggested that we staff an inexperienced Jedi as their General. A little on-the-job training, so to speak. This would be a good opportunity for it."

Obi-Wan's handle on his emotions must be even weaker than expected, because he barely manages to quell his alarm before projecting it at Mace. Some of it must still slip through, because Mace's eyebrows go up in surprise.

“And there’s the second thing,” Mace adds, mild and dangerous. “You can’t tell anyone about this plan, Obi-Wan. Not Anakin, not your clones, and not your duchess. Prove to the Council that you're not getting attached." 

"I shall of course comply with what the Council thinks is wise," Obi-Wan says, centering himself with a great deal of effort. He knows his politics, and he knows that an argument with Mace right now isn't a hill worth dying on. 

Mace nods, appeased but clearly still wary as he starts to walk away. “Meet me back here tonight at 2000 hours standard. We’ll discuss the rest then.”

Left alone at last, Obi-Wan turns towards the quarters that were assigned to him when he returned as a newly appointed Jedi Knight, crippled with the guilt of failing to save his Master.

Then, as now, he was frustrated by his inability to detach. Cody's words at the start of the campaign hit him again: you can't solve a problem by pretending it doesn't exist. You have to address the problem and use it. In fact, Obi-Wan thinks with a spark of anger, his attachments have allowed him to see what the Jedi Council has not; why should he remove them? Perhaps Satine could use her neutral contacts to—

He breathes in, breathes out. No. No, that’s just the siren call of the Dark Side. It’s always the easier choice. 

Because Satine is not his to love, and neither is Cody. Satine’s been planning something since she rescued the clones—no, since she first started beating the worn scraps of Mandalore into a new flaming sword. He doesn’t know what she’s planning or how he factors into it, but he would be a fool to think that her flirtations are entirely sincere. And Cody, well. Reliable, methodical, impossibly loyal Cody is hers, first. Not his. 

Still, _still_ , his hand hovers over the private commnet that one of the commandos had set up between Satine and himself for emergency communications. It’s encrypted seven ways to Centaxday, but Obi-Wan knows that the Council is monitoring any and all signals sent from his terminals right now. His message might not be readable, but his sending it would be noticed. 

He knows what he should do: he should do exactly as Mace has prescribed, and leave Satine to cry at his funeral and leave Cody in the hands of another Jedi until the threat to Palpatine has passed.

And yet.

One of Satine’s most recent messages to him on the fleet intranet is about Mandalorian victories in retaking part of Concord Dawn, and he pulls up a reply. After a second's thought, he sends back two words: _oya, oya_.

Anyone typing it into a translator would get back “Cheers!” or “Let’s hunt!”, and any Mandalorian would know that it’s the root for the word “to live”.

It's all he can send. He prays it's enough.

Ultimately, he “dies”, Palpatine survives, and afterwards he wipes the last vestiges of feared bounty hunter Rako Hardeen from his face with good riddance.

He's exhausted, lonely, and more uncertain about the Jedi's ever-worsening means to their ends when he returns to Coruscant. 

It's Satine he sees first. She flings herself into his arms the second he steps off the transport, and Obi-Wan has to steady them both before they fall backwards into Anakin. Her armor is a series of hard planes and angles pressed against him, as uncomfortable as it is extremely welcome. He wraps his arms around her as best he can while she shakes and sobs against him.

"Oh, Satine, I," he stutters, desperately afraid that she'd misunderstood his message, until he realizes that she's shaking with laughter instead of tears. He can't feel it in the Force—her shields have been getting better—but he can feel it in the way her body moves, in the huffs of breath that her helmet vocoder doesn't catch.

He pulls her in closer. 

"My dear, I am so sorry," he says for the benefit of the Jedi around him. "There was no other way."

She pulls back and punches him in the shoulder with no force at all behind the blow.

"There's always another way," she says, controlled fury in her voice, and Obi-Wan wonders if she's trying to convince the Jedi Council that she's not going to be an attachment problem any more. 

He becomes certain when she continues, "But it's not just me you need to apologize to. I've never seen Cody so angry."

Out of the corner of his eye, Obi-Wan sees Mace's eyebrows go up, and Yoda nods sagely as he taps his cane against the tile. Anakin looks like he's about to say something—anger is still rolling off him in waves—but he must decide to wait his turn in the growing queue of people who want to rip Obi-Wan a new one.

"I've never seen Cody angry at all," Obi-Wan says, entirely honest.

Satine pulls away from him and readjusts her helmet. She sniffs as she turns, and it's a horrible staticky sound when filtered through her helmet. "You're about to start."

The Council releases him to his ship with no other warnings, after that.

Both Cody and Rex are waiting for him on the _Negotiator_ ’s bridge. Satine _had_ been lying to the Council for him, because neither of them look angry, but Rex seems a little wary. He hurries over to greet them, clasping their shoulders in reassurance.

“Captain, Commander, it’s wonderful to see you well,” he says. 

"And you're looking awful spry for a dead man, General," Rex says, and Obi-Wan gives him a pained smile, unsure if Rex had been let in on the secret.

"I'm truly sorry for any harm I caused," he says, and Rex just nods. Obi-Wan is grateful, briefly, that the 501st had been under another Jedi's supervision while Anakin was hunting down 'Rako Hardeen'. “I know I've missed much. Please, how was the operation on Umbara? I’d heard there was some trouble.”

Rex and Cody trade a look that Obi-Wan can’t quite parse. He'd read on the flight up that the Separatists had claimed a few casualties—at least one Jedi, Pong Krell—but the reports had indicated very few losses otherwise.

“Don’t worry, sir,” Rex says, and now he just seems satisfied, as if he’d been expecting a different reaction from Obi-Wan entirely. “We took care of it.”

-—-

After that, Obi-Wan and the 212th fly a little further under the Council's radar. Some of the more technical commandos build an independent emergency commnet with a few proprietary adjustments to fleet infrastructure, so Obi-Wan, Cody, and Satine can talk without the Council seeing the sheer breadth of the messages they send each other. The longer they can keep the Council thinking Obi-Wan's sleeping on the metaphorical couch, the better—

Especially when he’s never actually left the couch in the first place.

He gets more chances to think about that. With the war worsening, the 212th has been forced to resupply and perform a crew rotation in Mandalore almost every standard month. Obi-Wan has grown to treasure these times more than any other, and not just for the respite. He, Cody, and Satine have taken to discussing strategies over dinner and _tihaar_ whenever they can. With Satine’s creativity and Cody’s methodical attention to detail, “impossible” always seems so far away. Whatever they’re doing, it’s _working_. They’re two years into the war, and the Separatists seem to be on the backfoot much more than anyone had been expecting. Obi-Wan’s concerns over the clone conspiracy seem muted, now—if Dooku had had a plan, it’s backfiring.

The hearthfire in Satine’s room is burning low, and their lively chatter has fallen into a peaceful silence. It makes him wonder what he’ll do after the war is over, where he'll go. When he was younger, he’d wondered if Qui-Gon had pulled him out of Mandalore so quickly because he could feel Obi-Wan starting to sink roots into its rocky, ancient soil. He thinks that siren song is still drawing him in.

As if sensing the meandering path of his thoughts, Satine glances over at him, and her eyes are sharper than they should be after two tall glasses of _tihaar_.

“Hmm. Will you indulge us for a moment, Obi-Wan? Cody and I are curious about something,” she says.

Obi-Wan glances at Cody out of the corner of his eye, and his expression is as blank as a professional sabacc player’s. Cody is quiet in the Force, but there’s a tension thrumming through Satine like the anticipation before a hunt.

“I’m always happy to assist the Mand’alor,” Obi-Wan says diplomatically. He’s missing something, again. Perhaps he is simply missing something, still.

“Oh, don’t ply me with your ‘Negotiator’ mask, Obi-Wan; I know you too well,” Satine says, and her words are harsh, but her tone is light. Cody coughs into his sleeve to cover what is almost certainly a chuckle. “No, Cody and I have been talking, and we want to hear you defend this Republic that’s fought against us almost as hard as the Separatists. Jedi can have no attachments, correct? Then why are you so attached to this particular political cesspit?”

The candles are burning lower on the table; the floor-to-ceiling windows overlook a city slowly returning home for the night. The light from the flames and buildings reflect on the jade of Satine’s hair piece and on the white plastoid of Cody’s armor. There is very little sound in the room, this far above the bustle of the streets below. Obi-Wan weighs his words very, very carefully.

“We Jedi are not attached to the Republic, but to its ideals,” he says. “It’s the Council’s belief that the Republic is more dedicated to democracy and freedom than others of its like.”

“You have a lot of tolerance for institutions that say one thing and do another, then,” Satine says, and Obi-Wan fights a wince. There is no castigation in her sky blue eyes, only a quiet sort of waiting. “But you’re no dreamer any more, Obi-Wan. Do you really think the goals of the Republic—the Republic and the Jedi, now—still align with yours?”

It’s a question that Obi-Wan has asked himself hundreds, if not thousands, of times. It has no sharp bite, not any more: it is a slow-burning poison, festering in the bottom of his heart.

“No, not entirely,” he admits, quiet, but his voice is the only sound in the hall. He doesn’t think he’s admitted it to anyone else before this point; certainly not to Anakin, and possibly not even to himself. Satine and Cody together have slowly whittled away all his walls. “I know the Senate is flawed, and Cody well knows that the Jedi have given orders that I could not follow. But I can’t abandon them now. If I can’t save the Republic, what can I do?”

Satine leans forward, her eyes intent. A single lock of hair has sprung free from her jade hair comb: a coil of gold unspooling over her cheek. At her right side, Cody is looking at him with a cool curiosity, and his spine is straight but his shoulders are at ease. Obi-Wan feels the air charging between the three of them like the hum of a lightsaber activating. 

“What can you do? Obi-Wan, save those you _can_ ,” she says. “Save those you love.”

Ah, there. In Satine's words, Obi-Wan can hear an echo of the most important piece of the Mandalorian creed: clan first. It's the antithesis of the Jedi code. 

He sits back in his chair as the fight seeps out of him. The argument against that kind of attachment is one he knows in his sleep, in his heart, in his bones: it’s one he has been repeating to himself since he first caught sight of Satine again across the throne room. Since he first felt Cody’s hand on the back of his neck, holding him up, and holding him down.

“Jedi can love no one person above all others. It is our duty to value all life equally, and to work towards the preservation of all life," he says by rote. 

Satine and Cody trade a single look, and Cody shifts in his seat to more fully face Obi-Wan.

“As far as I can tell,” Cody says, “trying to save everything is the best way to lose it all.”

“Cody—”

“No, Obi-Wan, listen,” Cody interrupts, and Obi-Wan shuts his mouth in wide-eyed surprise at Cody's sudden aggression. “You know your Republic is corrupt. You know this war was designed to keep the weak in power at the cost of millions of lives. And _I know_ that you’re trying to do the right thing, but your Republic’s ‘right things’ have resulted in two years of stalemate, a complete lack of communication between the neutral states and the Republic, and more cities than I care to count burnt to ash beneath our boots. Your Jedi Order has been massacred, and your democracy is becoming more totalitarian by the day.”

It's more than he's ever heard Cody say at once outside of a mission report, yet every word is like a blow from a Verpine rifle, shaking Obi-Wan’s already-weakened foundations. His calm shatters.

“Do you think I can’t see that?” Obi-Wan snaps. “Do you think I have been able to look away from that, for even a second?” 

He has to close his eyes to draw the barbed, vicious anger out of his heart. It isn’t anger at them; it’s anger at his own failures. He has failed the Republic, and, somehow, he knows that he's failing Anakin, too. He breathes in, deep, and holds it, before opening his eyes again. Cody and Satine are watching him with a hard sort of patience.

“Better to serve the Republic than the Separatists," Obi-Wan concludes, when he can finally control his voice.

“Better to serve us than either,” Satine says, and there, that’s the crux of it, isn’t it. This is what they’ve been building towards. They are the trap he would choose. Obi-Wan’s heart thuds against his ribcage as if trying to escape. 

Satine presses. “Join _us_ , Obi-Wan. Join Mandalore. We know your former padawan isn't the only one frustrated by this backwards progress.”

“I can’t—”

“You can,” Cody says, and all the quiet certainty of him is a steel pillar beneath his words. “You’re a good man, Obi-Wan, but those senseless Jedi ideals have locked you into being nothing more than a bloodless tool for the Republic. A _dying_ Republic. With us, a better future would be more than just an ideal.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Obi-Wan repeats, and his voice is more plaintive than he ever wanted it to be. “Please, Cody, you understand loyalty better than anyone I’ve ever met. And Satine, if you had asked me when we were younger—before my responsibilities to the Order, to Anakin—I’d have gone. But now?”

“Now, you’re leashed by a system that would see you destroyed,” Satine says, but she sighs and picks her glass back up. Somehow, Obi-Wan knows that it’s more of a tactical retreat than a surrender. “Alright, alright, Obi. You don’t have to make any decisions now; our door will be open to you until you shut it. Just promise us that you’ll think about it, okay? Don’t let your duty to the Order blind you to your duty to what’s right.”

Obi-Wan breathes out slowly and carefully, and he lets Cody and Satine maneuver the conversation to safer topics. He doesn’t add much to the discussion after that. Satine had told him to think about it, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to do anything else.

Later, back in his rooms, with the warmth of _tihaar_ in his stomach alongside the ever-present knot of anxiety, running Satine’s words over and over in his head, his brain can't stop tripping over the words _'our_ door'.

-—-

It’s only a short few days after that that Dex sends word to Obi-Wan about a glimpse of a Mandalorian helmet accompanied by a lightsaber on Nal Hutta. It makes sense, honestly: who would look for a traditional Mandalorian on a Hutt planet? He hesitates for only a single second before forwarding the message and comming Satine. She answers only a few minutes later, her voice clearly filtered through her helmet vocoder.

“You’re sure?” she asks.

“As sure as we can be.”

“We leave today, then.”

Obi-Wan grips his comm a little tighter, wishing that she was at her war table instead of transmitting through her helmet. He’s sending her to what is possibly a trap and definitively a fight for her life—he’s sending her to _someone’s_ death. Against the will of the Force and against all of his training, he hopes desperately that it’s not hers.

“ _K’oyaci_ , Satine,” he says. _Stay alive_. The Force rings with alarm at the thought, and he pushes the warning to the side. If the Force doesn't want to keep her breathing, smiling, and coming home to tease him mercilessly about being worried, then he doesn't care what the Force wants.

“ _Oya oya_ , Ob’ika,” she says, a grin evident in her voice, and the line goes dead before he can object to the diminutive version of his name.

He knows it’s selfish, but he redirects the 212th back towards Mandalore so that he’s there when her ship comes in. He’s there to see her walking down the gangway, fierce and triumphant, singed and bloodied, the Darksaber in hand, and his heart sings with a shameful relief.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she says, and she reaches a hand out to cradle the back of his head. When she tugs his forehead into the cold metal of her helmet, he closes his eyes, and he doesn’t pull away.

-—-

Now that Satine has the Darksaber, she has at last earned her title: Satine Kryze, the Mand’alor Unrelenting. Obi-Wan agrees whole-heartedly.

Honestly, with that box checked, Obi-Wan had expected her to redouble her efforts on getting the other thing she has decided to want: him. He had expected Cody to corner him on the _Negotiator_ after a meeting or during one of their late-night planning sessions, or for her to track him down when they're both on Mandalore or Coruscant. Neither of them do. When they're together, their emotions are focused, ticking like clockwork, but they don’t broach the subject of Obi-Wan’s loyalty again.

Even without a direct push, Obi-Wan knows he’s slipping. Mace accuses him of _going native_ , and he’s not sure Mace is wrong. The Council assigns the 212th missions on the other side of the galaxy from Mandalore, but they still don't know how often Obi-Wan and Satine meet over their private commnet, laughing long into the night. 

Plus, they can hardly strip him of his command. His and Cody's bond is growing to the point where it's starting to manifest outside the Force: Cody _always_ manages to find his lightsaber if he drops it, and Obi-Wan can feel Cody across an entire battlefield these days. He knows it’s only a matter of time before they start feeling each other’s pain.

At the Council’s urging, Obi-Wan makes a token effort to get some distance by running a mission with the 501st instead. He’s been neglecting Anakin, he thinks. Ahsoka’s absence is a still-bleeding wound. He feels guilty for failing her, for being so caught up in his own political chains that he didn’t see the ones tightening around her.

The biospheres on Aleen look out over such a fascinating terrain that it can be easy to get lost in thought by a window, but Obi-Wan knows that Anakin’s thoughts are walking a different well-known road. Guilt spirals off him in dark, heavy waves.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says, walking up to where Anakin stares with such intensity at the outcrops below. "I know you miss her."

“It's not just that. I’m just, I'm so _worried_ , Master. I mean, I know she can take care of herself, but...” Anakin trails off. His gaze doesn't seem to be on anything in front of him, and his words sound like something he’s told himself a million times. Obi-Wan moves up to the window and tucks his hands into his sleeves, sighing.

“Yes, but even when they can take care of themselves—even when they’re stronger than you are, in some ways—it hurts not being there to help. I worry, too.”

Anakin does look up at that. “I thought _you_ didn’t worry about anything. Shouldn’t we be trusting in the will of the Force?”

“I suppose we should.” 

Obi-Wan smiles crookedly at Anakin’s reflection in the mirror, thinking a little too long about the people he wishes he could protect.

Anakin blinks before looking away. “I hadn’t realized that you, uh—that you also struggle with the requirements of the Jedi code.” 

“Oh, yes, Anakin," Obi-Wan says. “Sometimes I wonder if struggling is all I ever do.”

“ _You_?” Anakin asks, thrown abruptly back into shock, and Obi-Wan mentally curses. He pulls his calm back to himself like a second cloak, and it’s an uncomfortable weight after too long with the practical honesty of the Mandalorians. He’s become too accustomed to Satine’s perceptiveness and Cody’s methodical conviction; it’s made him complacent enough to set a bad example for his former padawan.

“To struggle with personal attachments is the perpetual struggle of the Jedi,” Obi-Wan says, hoping that it sounds more like sage wisdom than an excuse. Anakin is almost certainly too fragile to deal with Obi-Wan’s ongoing uncertainty, and Obi-Wan couldn’t handle failing another one of his students. “Perfection might be unattainable, but the code is what allows us to strive for it.”

“Right, of course,” Anakin says, his voice going wooden, and Obi-Wan can’t help but be glad that he’s too wrapped up in his own thoughts to sense Obi-Wan’s. 

Still, Obi-Wan clearly needs to do something more. He resolves to ask the Council for some shore leave in Coruscant in the next few weeks; Anakin always seems more at peace in the city, likely because he’s closer to Padme. Ahsoka’s departure has made him cling harder to the attachments that she was supposed to help him move further from. 

Obi-Wan can hardly fault Anakin for it, now.

He’s opening his mouth to make the suggestion to Anakin as they’re heading to the bridge of the _Resolute_ when Jesse comes running up, a maelstrom of urgency in the Force.

“Generals,” Jesse pants when he reaches them. “We’ve just received urgent news from the Senate. The Separatists have invaded Coruscant.”

Anakin grabs his shoulder, wide-eyed. “Are the senators okay? How’s the Chancellor?”

“Kidnapped, sir,” Jesse says, and Anakin pales. “General Grievous has kidnapped the Chancellor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no, the Chancellor? Kidnapped? What a cliffhanger... ;)
> 
> Relatedly, I'm going to try to accelerate the update schedule, because I've got two other WIPs sitting in my documents folder, and I want to finish this up so I can work on those too <3 Thank you for reading!! All feedback loved.


	4. Chapter 4

The very second that Obi-Wan limps onto the transport vehicle behind Palpatine, his private comm buzzes three times on his arm. His head and chest still ache from the weight of the durasteel wall collapsing on him, and he’s grateful for the excuse to leave even as he wonders what Satine or Cody needs. 

He sends Anakin on ahead with his sincere congratulations. With Palpatine safely in the hands of the Coruscant Guard and Dooku’s head on the floor of his shattered star destroyer, Obi-Wan should have considerably fewer concerns, and yet—

Well, he'll wait until he can see Cody's eye-roll in person before saying he has a bad feeling about all of this.

He's halfway to the diplomatic quarter before he realizes that most of his bad feeling isn't actually his. Not just most of it: _all_ of it, and more anxiety keeps slamming into him every second he gets closer. The transport drops him off at the landing pad for the Mandalorian embassy, and he's running the second his feet touch the ground.

Half of his attention is on getting through security, but the other half is sunk into the Force. Satine's emotions are a whirlwind, a riot of confusion and hurt, and Cody—usually the calmer one, or at least more shielded—isn't much better. Obi-Wan knows that he shouldn't be able to feel them this precisely, but he can worry about attachment when he's not racing towards their Force signatures.

He has his lightsaber in hand when he reaches them, but it quickly becomes apparent that the threat is on their datapads and not at their throats. Apart from a small white bandage at Cody’s temple, they both seem physically fine.

"Are you alright?" Obi-Wan asks softly, cutting off his lightsaber. He must look a mess; he still has soot on his robes and what feels an awful lot like droid oil in his beard.

"Delta just returned from Kamino," Satine says, which is as good as a ‘no’. "And Omega just finished decrypting the Aurek-level comm relays from the Senate for the past two decades."

"Were they caught?" Obi-Wan asks. At one point he would've expressed outrage instead of concern, but he's clearly long past it.

Cody shakes his head. "No, they're fine. A major crisis is a good time for espionage; it's like hiding a lit match in a wildfire."

They’re stalling, and they know it. At last, Satine squares her shoulders.

"Look, Obi, you should sit down. Do you remember when Tup killed General Tiplar?" Satine asks, as if Obi-Wan could ever forget.

It had been one of the worst days of the war. Obi-Wan had lost a friend, and the clones had almost lost every scrap of goodwill that they'd managed to build in the eyes of the Republic. Tup had clearly been unwell, feverish and panting, and no one had known where to send him for care. The Jedi Council advocated for the mind healers at the temple; the Chancellor’s office had wanted him imprisoned in preparation for a trial; and the Mandalorians were adamant that he come home. 

It had almost been a moot point, honestly. Before the medical transport had even reached the _Negotiator_ ’s docking bay, the Separatists had attacked in greater force than they had even shown on the planet below. In the end, Rex realized that they were trying to get to Tup, and one of Rex’s ARCs came up with a plan to stop them. 

Wearing vacc suits and using the medical transport as cover, Rex and half of Torrent had ferried all of the injured troopers to the _Negotiator_ without once docking the ship. Afterwards, they’d blown the docking lines themselves. Once the medical transport drifted into the rain of blasterfire between the two armies, Rex had hit a remote det, and the ship had erupted in a brief burst of fire and a thousand durasteel pieces.

“We left a few corpses on the ship,” Cody had explained afterwards with dry humor. “If Dooku can’t tell two brothers apart by their faces, I doubt he can by their feet.”

“Ah. Then, is there anything we can do for—for a Mandalorian burial?” Obi-Wan had asked.

Cody had tapped the personal signifier on his armor and then held out a few similar-looking chips. 

“Body isn’t what matters,” he’d said.

But apparently that hadn’t been the end of it. As far as Obi-Wan knows, Tup has been in a medically-induced coma on Mandalore ever since. Fives had spent a couple of weeks with him at first, desperate to be there when Tup woke up, but then he’d returned to the front. 

“I can do more for him out here,” he’d said grimly, and Rex and Anakin had made a point of increasing their resupply trips to Mandalore.

It had been one mystery of many. Obi-Wan sits down on the low sofa opposite Cody and Satine. There’s still so much they don’t know and, with Kamino in ruins, very few people left to ask. It seems incredible that there were any answers to be found in the wreckage of Tipoca City. 

“Did they find out what happened to Tup?” Obi-Wan asks.

“Yes. They found this,” Cody says. The Force is screaming at Obi-Wan to stop, to look away, to leave, but Obi-Wan ignores it and takes the flimsi Cody passes over. It's a medical scan of the right hemisphere of someone's brain, and there’s something very small and very wrong in the center of the frontal lobe. 

‘CC-2224’ is printed along the bottom.

“A tumor?”

“A biomechanical chip,” Cody corrects. “Delta found the remains of the implantation hardware in Tipoca City, and, with an idea of what to look for, Omega found the specs documents in Senate relays from twenty years ago. Tup's chip had malfunctioned, activating early, and… Obi-Wan, these chips, these control chips—they’re in all of us.” 

He hesitates, then nods at the scans in Obi-Wan’s hands. “ _Were_ in all of us.”

Obi-Wan's heart clenches suddenly, violently. “Cody, you couldn’t have known what would happen.”

“Tup’s was too degraded to study. If there were any consequences for removal, I wanted to be the one to take the hit.”

Obi-Wan hates, _hates_ when someone else springs the trap. His eyes linger on the white bandage on Cody's forehead, his untrembling hands.

"And you're alright?" Obi-Wan asks. Fear settles like a peach pit in the bottom of his stomach, and it won't dissolve into the Force no matter how hard he reaches for peace. Cody reaches out to grip Obi-Wan's arm with a reassuring strength, and nods.

Next to him, Satine’s eyes are hard. 

“Well, we know what the consequences are for _not_ removing it," she says. "Tech finished slicing the code half an hour ago. It’s a mind control device with one primary directive: kill the Jedi.”

The statement doesn’t even register, at first. The idea is too much like something out of a holovid, like a story to tell younglings to keep them in line. After everything that’s happened in this one day—fighting General Grievous, rescuing the Chancellor, finding that Anakin killed Count Dooku—Obi-Wan is stretched to the limits of his belief. 

Damn it all, he thinks, fatalistic. He’d thought they were so close to peace. But here it is at last: the trap that Dooku had laid for the Jedi more than a dozen years ago. The trap that the Jedi would have chosen, blindly and gratefully and cruelly, if Satine had never rescued the clones.

“Obi-Wan?” Satine asks, and her eyes are full of a concern that he doesn’t deserve. He thinks he must be broadcasting his despair into the Force, and he pulls it all into a single point in his chest and buries it beneath his resolve.

“First thing’s first,” Obi-Wan says, shifting into the headspace he uses on the battlefield. If there's any Jedi lesson he can still use, it's how to set aside his emotions to get something done.

The Force is a constant peal of warning bells, almost as if it doesn’t want him to dig deeper. 

He ignores it. “We need to remove these chips. We can unravel the conspiracy later, but right now, we need to make sure these things aren’t a threat to any of the troopers. Or the Jedi.”

Cody and Satine nod in tandem. They’re both—stars, but they’re both exactly who Obi-Wan would want at his side in a crisis of this magnitude. This would be impossible without them.

It’s going to be hard as hell even with them.

“We can start with the commanders,” Cody suggests. “They’re the ones most likely to have their chips activated first. We need to be quiet about this, though. We can’t risk whoever put them there activating them early.”

Striking the right balance of urgency and secrecy takes hours of nerve-wracking back-and-forth, and Obi-Wan feels like he's keeping a breakdown at bay the entire time. They decide to prioritize the commanders and the medics, assuming that those groups could do damage control if the chips were activated before the entire GAR is safe. Considering how this conspiracy must be rooted in the upper echelons of the Senate, it's a risk to send anything over the fleet intranet… but they need Bones and Kix to start working brain surgery into standard trooper check-ups as soon as possible. 

The plan has to work in stages; there’s a chance, however small, that there’s a spy in the GAR—or a spy on Mandalore. As much as Obi-Wan wants to spread word as far and wide as possible, he knows it’s safer to slowly and carefully widen the circle of who’s in the know. When the 212th and 501st are halfway to safety, Bones and Kix can spread details of the operation to a couple other CMOs, encrypted as Personal Identifying Information and passed via datachip instead of the net.

After they've at last coordinated with Echo to send instructions with as much encryption as possible, Obi-Wan feels like he can breathe for the first time since he entered the Mandalorian embassy. Cody and Satine feel more like their usual calm selves, too.

“Alright, we can do the rest in the morning,” Satine yawns. 

“The rest, of course,” Cody says, smiling wryly. “'The rest' of dismantling a decades-long conspiracy underlying the creation of myself, every one of my brothers, and a galactic war.” 

She pats his shoulder and kisses his cheek. “Exactly. In the morning.”

Obi-Wan waves them off, looking away from their easy affection. “Get some rest, you two. I want to see if there’s anything in the Jedi archives about Sith mind control. If the chips are Force-activated somehow, I want to know."

Cody hovers, clearly on the verge of telling him to sleep just as he has so many times before, but Satine shakes her head.

“There are plenty of guest rooms here,” she says, foreclosing any discussion of Obi-Wan returning to the Temple. “Choose any you like.”

They both turn towards the door directly opposite the entrance, and Obi-Wan throws himself into his research before he can wonder what would happen if he followed them in.

-—-

When he blinks awake in the darkness of the very early morning, Obi-Wan has no memory of falling asleep. He’s been tucked into the couch with a blanket over his shoulders, and he's groggy enough to have slept a few hours. His bones creak when he stands, a savage reminder of his acrobatics on Dooku's ship the day before, and it’s frankly incredible how much has happened in the span of a single standard day.

There’s a kitchen to the right of the living room, and a kettle is already waiting for him on the stove. His heart beats a painful staccato against his chest when he finds his favorite tea, unopened and waiting for him, in the cupboard with the mugs. He catches the kettle just before it starts whistling, and he carries his tea with shaking hands to the living room balcony. The red-gold fire of pre-dawn creeps up and over the very edge of the horizon, limning the distant menagerie of skyscrapers in a faint ember cloak.

The world spins, uninterrupted by the chaos of his thoughts. As the sky overhead shifts from a deep navy to a lighter blue, he feels Cody stir in the other room. The warmth of his Force signature moves towards Obi-Wan like a ship moving steadily, unerringly towards home.

Obi-Wan exhales sharply, tightening his hands around his mug until his knuckles are bone white.

“Who could have planned the chips?” he asks without preamble, without even looking over. His worries burst from his chest. “Who could benefit from this—from your brothers, from the war?”

Cody steps up to the balcony, and his expression is gentle in his transparisteel reflection. 

“You already know,” he says.

Palpatine’s face, ambivalent and calm even as Dooku's hostage, even during their free-fall, rises unbidden in Obi-Wan’s mind. Obi-Wan frowns and remembers how Dooku had felt in the Force just before Obi-Wan had lost consciousness: filled with expectation and then, suddenly, with fear. The memories wash in, one after another: how Palpatine had been named Chancellor, his slow accumulation of emergency powers, and the constant, enforced stalemate of the Clone Wars. 

There are always two Sith. No more, no less.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan admits. He scrubs a hand over his face and tries to keep his voice from shaking. “Yes, I do. _Force_ , Cody. This whole time. This whole war. Everything I’ve fought for—”

He cuts himself off. The Republic has fallen. Anakin is falling. He can’t fall, too, though he feels like he is fracturing into a million pieces. He looks at his hands, too ashamed to look up.

“What do I _do_?” he asks, but he’s not expecting an answer.

And Cody—gentle, steady, stalwart Cody—says, “In the absence of perfect information, I will accept your best guess.”

Tension builds just behind Obi-Wan’s temples, and he tries to release the pressure into the Force and fails. 

"I can't abandon the Jedi," Obi-Wan says unsteadily. "The Jedi have been my whole life; I live by the Jedi code. More than that, I have defined myself by it.”

Cody hums noncommittally. “A code is only a map towards honor, Obi-Wan. And I think you’ve already found yours.”

“ _Cody_ ," Obi-Wan says, helpless. He thinks about this man having his will taken from him, about how a viper has been sitting at the heart of the Republic for decades, and about how many people have died—how many more might still die—because the Jedi have been so blind.

Cody catches him when his knees buckle, though the mug goes tumbling out of his shaking hands to shatter on the floor. Distantly, Obi-Wan wants to kneel and clean it up, to apologize, but Cody is bundling him back to the couch. He can’t seem to get enough air. Each breath seems too shallow for his lungs, and his hands are curling into rigid claws. He closes his eyes when Cody pulls him into his lap, tugging Obi-Wan’s head against his chest. Beneath him, Cody's chest rises with deep, intentional breaths that Obi-Wan instinctively tries to match.

“In for three,” Cody says, and his voice is a calm rumble that Obi-Wan can feel. “Out for five. Count with me, Obi-Wan.”

He matches Cody’s breaths until the world settles back into clarity, until he can focus on Cody’s body beneath him, still sleep-warm through his blacks and smelling like sandalwood and home. There’s no judgment in Cody’s mind, only a steady current of reassurance. That endless river of strength and faith rushes through Obi-Wan, filling the holes in his own heart. 

He pieces himself back together slowly, wondering if the pieces are coming together differently than they fell apart.

At last on more stable ground, he shifts away from Cody to find Satine waiting in the doorway, out of her armor for once. Her white cotton nightgown looks worn and comfortable, and, even here, at the end of all things, his heart stutters at the sight.

She moves further into the room, graceful and careful. They all know what these revelations have cost Obi-Wan.

“Will you join us now, Obi-Wan? Now that you know your Republic has fallen?” she asks. Her voice is soft, but her words burn. 

“I still have a duty to the Order,” Obi-Wan says, worn thin. He has always known his duty. He has always _done_ his duty. “I have a duty to the Council, to the will of the Force. I cannot change my allegiance to them because of—because—”

Her walk over to Obi-Wan is measured and full of intent, and, through the haze, he can’t help but admire the grace with which she moves. Her bare feet make no sound on the carpeted floor. When she reaches him, she cups his face in her hands and runs fingers rough with callouses across the edge of his beard. He sighs, unable to help leaning into the touch. Cody is a solid warmth along his back. He shouldn't let them— 

“Obi-Wan,” Satine says, as melodic as harp strings. She kneels in front of the couch and stares up at him, a gesture that sends his stomach plummeting. Her eyes are so blue. 

“My dear, your first duty is to your own heart," she says. "Ever since I have known you, you have sacrificed yourself for what you’ve been told is the greater good. But that greater good is a _lie_ . The Republic that’s been ripping pieces from your soul is overrun with corruption, and the Jedi Order has completely lost its way. You _know_ that now. You know what they would have done. What they still might do.”

With her gentle, scarred hands, Satine pulls him up and out of his seat, waiting until he is standing before her with his heart pounding as if to beat out of his chest. Cody rises as well, standing sentinel behind them: ready, waiting. The Force is a jagged cacophony of warning, but the Force wanted Satine dead—wanted the chips undiscovered—wanted the Jedi destroyed—

“Cody and I can help you actually help people,” she says. “Darling, please, join us instead. _We_ rescued the clones; _we’re_ defeating the Separatists; _we_ unearthed this dark conspiracy. This isn’t a choice between Light and Dark. It’s a choice between an impossible path... and a path where you don’t have to keep throwing yourself, blindly and endlessly, at the unsheathed knives of the universe.”

The sound that tries to break free from Obi-Wan’s chest isn’t a sob; it’s something more wounded, and terrified, and tired.

“ _Satine_ ,” he begs, unsure what he’s even begging for, and then Cody presses back in along his back like a benediction.

“Trust us,” Cody says, soft and sure behind him. “We love you.”

Obi-Wan’s breath catches in his throat, but before he can respond, Satine steps in closer, brushing her lips across his cheekbone.

“We love you,” Satine echoes, whispering in his ear. “This is the way.”

It doesn’t feel like falling, in that instant. It feels like coming home. It feels like stepping out of a bacta tank, free and healed at last. It feels like Camien tea smells, the first morning after a bloodless victory. It’s relief that tips him forward so that his forehead rests on Satine’s shoulder, and it’s joy that makes him shake.

When Satine and Cody trade a glance over Obi-Wan’s bowed head, Obi-Wan feels their presences in the Force shift: Satine’s is rife with triumph, and Cody’s is almost desperate with gratitude. Their feelings are so close at hand that it feels as if this last choice has cemented their Force bonds, because he is drowning in their warmth. He shudders; he had known that the most dangerous draw of the dark side was how good it felt, but he thought that had meant feeling powerful, or invincible.

All he feels now is an overwhelming sense of peace.

“What would you have me do?” Obi-Wan asks, at last, and his voice doesn’t break.

“Nothing, dearheart,” Satine says.

Her hand tilts his chin up. She studies him as her thumb strokes along the edge of his beard. “Get some rest. Take your time. We’re doing this for you.”

She kisses him, then, with his jaw held in one hand and her other hand reaching up to fist in his hair. It’s an open-mouthed kiss, wet and sudden, and she licks into his mouth like she’s laying a claim. Obi-Wan barely manages to draw in a breath through his nose before she pulls back, and her satisfaction purrs through the Force. Her eyes lock onto something over Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and then Obi-Wan is twisting around to look at Cody, to reach for Cody's arm as Cody leans in to kiss him too.

Where Satine had kissed like a claim, Cody kisses like a man drowning, like someone who has reached the surface after too many long minutes of a desperate upward swim. Cody pulls Obi-Wan bodily into him, kissing hard and fast and deep, overwhelming in his sincerity. When at last they break off, their breathing is harsh and over-loud in the quiet room.

“Come on, Obi, let’s get some rest,” Satine says, and Cody’s grip tightens on the back of his neck and the waist of his robes. They tug him into their bedroom, gently and sweetly, as the Coruscanti dawn breaks at last across the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As might be expected from that ending, the rating skyrockets in the next chapter ;)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating is now Explicit, and for good reason! If that's not the kind of thing you're here for, scroll down from the start until you see a scene break with far more dashes than usual and continue reading.

They do, actually, just get some rest. Obi-Wan is still exhausted, and Satine and Cody tuck him between them on the bed. Bracketed on either side by warmth and their steady, fierce love, Obi-Wan sleeps deeply at last.

Movement wakes him up. The light coming through the gauzy curtains is rich and golden, and Obi-Wan guesses a few hours have passed. His head is on Cody’s chest, and Satine is shifting away from where she had been pressed all along his back. The abundance of human contact, of warmth and comfort, seeps into his body like water in a desert. He turns to look at Satine, and she brushes her hand over his forehead to tuck his hair behind his ear. 

“Go back to sleep, Obi,” she says, quiet. “I have a Senate meeting in an hour, and we need to keep up appearances.”

The rhythm of Cody’s heart changes beneath Obi-Wan’s head, and Obi-Wan feels strong arms reach up and around him, as warm as sunlight even through the rough cotton of his underrobe.

“Satine, can I?” Cody asks, voice rough with sleep, and Satine laughs.

“Take him,” she says, her double meaning like a double-edged sword, and she leans in to press a hard kiss to Obi-Wan’s temple before she slides out of bed. As she’s moving towards the closet, she calls over her shoulder, “I'll be back by 1400 standard at the latest, boys, so don’t go far.”

Cody runs his knuckles up and down Obi-Wan’s back, and he falls back into a light doze as Satine pulls her armor on and strides briskly out the door. Eventually, though, memories start filtering through the comfortable haze. Obi-Wan tries desperately to focus only on Cody’s steady breathing, the slow motion of Cody stroking his back; his mind feels clearer than it has in months, but if he thinks of anything that happened the night before, he worries he might splinter apart all over again.

“Cyare,” Cody says, so careful, and Obi-Wan’s heart stutters at the endearment. “Yesterday was hard on all of us, but especially on you. How are you feeling?"

Obi-Wan breathes out and makes an effort not to fist the fabric of Cody’s blacks. He’s fine. He's _fine_. This has been a long time coming. Not just his falling from grace, but his landing here, in the bed of the people he loves most. 

“I’m—well, to be honest, I’ve been better. But it was my choice,” he says, and he knows that Satine and Cody had ensured it would be. “And I think it was the right one. I just need to come to terms with the fact that the right choice doesn’t always have to be the more painful one.”

Cody makes a wounded noise, then, and he rolls them to the side until they’re curled face to face, like two matching parentheses. The hand that was stroking Obi-Wan’s back moves to cup his face.

“Can I kiss you?” Cody asks, and Obi-Wan blushes like someone who hadn’t spent the last few hours tucked between Cody and Satine’s arms. But if he’s forsaken the code, then he’s forsaken its restrictions, and he leans up instead of answering.

He lets Cody take the lead, and Cody takes it slow and careful, just a press of lips and movement. Eventually, though, Obi-Wan has had enough of careful. He runs his tongue across the seam of Cody’s lips, and they open for him automatically. The kiss changes, turning into something deep and still endlessly sweet, and longing is pouring out of Cody as if the flood gates on his emotions have collapsed.

Cody slides his hand backwards from Obi-Wan’s face, stroking his hair away from his face, and Obi-Wan can feel him smile into the kiss. All the desperation from last night is gone, replaced with this easy comfort, this building desire. Minutes pass and Obi-Wan loses track of time, lost in new sensations, until at last he pulls back, out of breath. Cody’s hand has moved lower, having slipped beneath the hem of Obi-Wan’s shirt at some point between the first minute and the last.

“What do you want?” Cody asks, breath faint against Obi-Wan’s face. “Obi-Wan, please, tell me what you want. I don’t want to rush you.”

“You’re not rushing me,” he says. He closes his eyes and leans forward to rest his forehead against Cody’s. What does he want? It’s been so long since he’s even considered what he wants in the context of actually getting it. Jedi are not supposed to want.

But he is no longer a Jedi.

Obi-Wan shifts in the loose grip of Cody’s arms to look Cody squarely in the eyes. The fire that he has been smothering for the past three years roars to life in his chest.

“Cody, I’ve wanted you—the both of you—for so long. Show me what I’ve been missing. Show me what I almost missed completely.”

Cody bites off a curse and pulls Obi-Wan on top of his broad chest. One of Cody’s hands wraps around the back of Obi-Wan’s head, pulling him into a kiss, and the other spreads like a brand across the width of his lower back, holding him in place. The hand on Obi-Wan’s head tilts his head back to the side to deepen the angle of the kiss, and Obi-Wan snakes his hands up the side of Cody’s shirt, desperate for the feeling of Cody’s skin against his.

They break with a gasp, and Obi-Wan can feel the hard line of Cody’s dick pressing insistently into his hip. He swallows and uses his hands to push himself up a few inches. Cody rolls his hips to follow him as he goes, and Obi-Wan gasps.

“Cody, wait,” Obi-Wan says, and Cody stills immediately. “No, I just—is it okay that Satine isn’t here?”

At that, Cody relaxes, and Obi-Wan can feel the laughter rumble from his chest to his throat. Cody shifts his hands to Obi-Wan’s hips to let Obi-Wan sit upright, perched across the tops of Cody’s thighs.

“You heard her this morning,” Cody says, teasing, then adds, “But we’ve discussed it before. We didn’t want to overwhelm you with the two of us, not at first. And she said she owes me one for what happened between you two on Mandalore.” 

Obi-Wan feels the blush run red and hot down his shoulders and up his neck, cresting at the tips of his ears. For all he flirts, he’ll admit that it’s mostly a defense mechanism, not a measure of his experience. “One?”

“At least.”

With a glint of appreciation in his eyes, Cody runs his hands up to Obi-Wan’s waist and back down his thighs, and Obi-Wan is suddenly, viciously impatient. He grabs the edges of his underrobe ties and pulls, feeling Cody tense gratifyingly beneath him as the fabric falls open and down his shoulders. 

“Let me see you,” he says, bold, and he reaches for the hem of Cody’s shirt. Cody grabs harder onto his waist, and Obi-Wan feels Cody’s core flex as he moves them both up the bed until Cody’s back is against the headboard and Obi-Wan’s legs are folded on either side of Cody’s hips. Mission accomplished, Cody reaches a hand to the back collar of his blacks and pulls his shirt off in one smooth motion.

Then there’s just skin, a vast map of it, with rivers of scars and mountains of muscle all laid out beneath Obi-Wan’s hands. He shifts his hips and presses down, rocking them together experimentally. The expensive white cotton sheets shift beneath them as they move, an easy slide.

“Come on, Ob’ika,” Cody says, and he puts an arm around Obi-Wan’s back to brace him. “Show me what you want.” 

And Obi-Wan reaches down to pop the buttons of his pants with shaking fingers. It takes a bit of work, a bit of shimmying and laughter, to get the waist of Cody’s pants down, but then Cody licks a stripe up his palm and takes them both in hand.

“ _Ah_ ,” Obi-Wan says, tipping forward and catching himself on Cody’s shoulder, gasping, tense and wound tight. Cody’s hand doesn’t stop its steady rhythm as he kisses Obi-Wan’s cheek, his nose, the soft skin beneath the fall of his eyelashes, his open mouth.

“That’s it, Obi-Wan, come on,” he murmurs, gentle. He sounds captivated, and Obi-Wan reaches through the Force to wrap himself in the warmth of Cody’s regard just as he is wrapped in the heat of Cody’s hand.

Through the thickening fog of pleasure, Obi-Wan reaches down to fit his fingers between Cody’s as they move up and down. He presses his face into the smooth junction of Cody’s neck and shoulder, shuddering as Cody drags his thumb beneath the head of Obi-Wan’s cock.

He feels Cody drag careful teeth up his neck, at the corner of his jaw, and nip at the edge of his ear. The arm Cody had been using to steady Obi-Wan’s back shifts, and Obi-Wan feels thick, calloused fingers slide down the curve of his ass and run, rough, over his entrance. His careful poise cracks apart like an ice sheet on the first day of spring, like a ray shield under heavy artillery, and desperation floods in.

“ _Please_ , Cody, please,” Obi-Wan gasps, shifting his hips back against Cody’s fingers and then forwards into the circle of their joined hands. And Cody presses in, lightly, with a single finger slicked only with sweat, but it’s enough. Electricity builds and crests in his shaking legs, in his cock, in the narrow space between his spine and his stomach, and Obi-Wan spills across Cody’s stomach with a shout. He comes down slowly, panting, more aware of Cody’s immense self-satisfaction in the Force than where they’re physically touching.

With the last of his wits, Obi-Wan pushes Cody’s hand out of the way and takes Cody’s still-hard cock in hand, gripping it hard at the base and pulling up in sure, hard strokes. It takes some effort, but in the quiet, he reaches for the words he needs.

“I want that; I want you,” he says, and he straightens so he can see Cody’s face as he brings him off. Cody had asked what Obi-Wan wanted, and Obi-Wan plans to give it to him. “I want you in me, over me, driving me into the mattress. I want you to take me, to hold me down with a—with a hand on the back of my neck.” 

At that, Cody’s breath catches, his eyes shutting and eyebrows furrowing, and Obi-Wan can feel his hips twitching up in little stuttering jerks, trying to last.

“A hand on my neck,” Obi-Wan continues, riding some brilliant high with all his words and wants bursting free. His negotiating skills have never had a better use. “Keeping me beneath you, until all I know is you. Until all I can do is say your name, and beg you for more.”

Cody inhales sharply and comes, spilling mostly into Obi-Wan’s hand, and they breathe together for a long moment in the over-heated air. They’re both a mess, panting and unsteady. There’s sweat pooled in the backs of Obi-Wan’s knees, in the creases of his hips; there’s semen across the top of his pants and Cody’s stomach; and Obi-Wan feels more content than he has since he was a padawan. At long last, the Force is quiet in his heart.

He sits up eventually, intending to make his way to the ‘fresher for a washcloth, but Cody rolls his hips and tips Obi-Wan onto his side.

“Let me,” Cody says. “Please.”

And then it’s easy to strip his pants the rest of these off and lay there, and to barely open his eyes even when a warm washcloth runs over his stomach and down his legs, around each of his fingers. The bed dips next to him when Cody climbs back in, and then he’s pulled back into a broad, familiar chest. Cody’s right hand cradles Obi-Wan's head until it's tucked against Cody's shoulder, and his left hand is a reassuring warmth at the base of Obi-Wan's spine. Cody presses a soft kiss to Obi-Wan's temple, and Obi-Wan can feel their heart beats, in tandem, start to slow.

“I should get up. We have so much work to do,” he mumbles after a few minutes have passed. He’s not sure he’s ever spent this much continuous time in a bed without being covered in bacta patches. “The chips—”

The body beneath him shakes with silent laughter.

“Unless you’ve managed to pick up brain surgery over the course of the war, there’s not much you can do about that now,” Cody says, impossibly fond. “Trust Bones and Kix to know their work. Come on, Obi-Wan, _rest_. At least until Satine gets back.”

Sweat cools on Obi-Wan’s skin, itchy between his shoulder blades. He wants to go back to sleep, but his brain is starting to spin. The absence of their third seems more obvious, now.

“Cody, how long have you and Satine been together?” he asks.

“Before the war, but not much before,” Cody says. “And not seriously. Not until you.”

“Me?”

The entire mattress shifts as Cody shrugs his wide shoulders. “You balanced us out. Gave us something to work towards.” A grin is evident in his voice; Obi-Wan knows from years of experience that it’s a grin with teeth. “Honestly, it’s a good thing she and I are such a good team. You’re a lot of work, Ob’ika.”

“I am _not_.”

“You definitely are,” Satine calls from the doorway.

Startled, Obi-Wan tries to roll off Cody, but Cody’s arms keep him pressed down. He twists his head to look over at her instead, surprised that he hadn’t felt her approach in the Force. 

"You're back early," Cody calls out.

"How could I stay away, knowing I had you two waiting in my bed?"

Satine's eyes linger on their sweat-stained hair, their bare upper bodies, and the rucked sheets, and she smirks. "Or not waiting, as it were."

Cody’s laugh rumbles through his whole chest, and Obi-Wan feels the last vestige of worry break off and dissolve into nothing.

“Can you really blame me? I had so much to catch up on,” Obi-Wan calls, curling a hand over one of Cody’s pecs, and he grins as Satine immediately starts unsnapping her light armor. Pieces of plastoid fall to the floor with dull clunks as she moves forward, never taking her eyes off Obi-Wan. It’s a thrill, as always, to be the center of her attention, and the thrill is all the sweeter for being clean and free of guilt.

“Show me what you’ve learned, then,” Satine says, stripped down to her tac suit, then to half of her tac suit. Obi-Wan barely has time to appreciate the show before she’s in nothing but a pair of black regulation briefs and a black halter, putting one knee up on the bed. She leans down to kiss Cody, hard, and she drags his lower lip between her teeth as she pulls away. 

For Obi-Wan, though, her kiss is as soft as a Naboo spring. Cody at last lets Obi-Wan roll off of his chest and lay flat on the bed as they kiss, and Satine throws a leg over his waist immediately. He looks up at her, breath caught in his throat, and he runs his hands up her tautly muscled sides to the curves of her breasts, still hidden behind her bra. To his right, Cody looks on with equal parts anticipation and indulgence, then reaches over to snap the band of Satine’s bra.

The sole ruler of Mandalore yelps with none of the dignity of her station, then reaches back with a glare to undo the clasp herself. Her small, peaked breasts still fit easily into Obi-Wan’s hands, and he feels her nipples pebble beneath each stroke of his thumbs, and this—it’s a heady feeling, an old new world to explore, and Obi-Wan is breathless all over again at the possibilities ranging out, infinite, before them. Satine grins down at him and rocks her hips over his, and the fabric of her panties is already damp as it scrapes across his abdomen.

He is abruptly, extremely grateful that he and Cody had taken the edge off half an hour ago.

As it is, he can’t help but tighten his grips on her hips and flip them, propping himself up on one arm and reaching down to press two fingers against her through the thin fabric. She’s sopping wet for him, for _them_ , already.

“I could feel you, you know,” she explains, pressing up against his fingers. “Through whatever Force nonsense Obi’s dragged us into. I could feel your pleasure, could feel it build and break, even halfway across the city.” 

She gasps as Obi-Wan rubs his thumb across her clit, and she criss-crosses her ankles behind his back to pull him closer. “And me—in full armor—shifting on my bench, knowing exactly what I was missing.”

Obi-Wan bends down, trailing his lips down the narrow slope of her nose and pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her lips.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he says, hoarse with longing and promise.

“You’d better.”

Obi-Wan moves backwards to sit in the vee of her open legs, and, between the two of them, they manage to get Satine’s panties off and out of the way. When he presses a finger into the wet heat of her, he watches her toes curl in the mussed sheets, and then it’s all he can do to lean down and follow his finger with his tongue. 

“ _Ah, ah_ ,” she says, sliding a hand into Obi-Wan’s hair as he adds a second finger. He presses the flat of his tongue against her clit and around it, feeling his chin grow wet and slick with her, sweet and soft. At the edge of his awareness, he feels Cody moving around the bed, and then, suddenly, a slick hand sliding down Obi-Wan’s back, teasing. Well-lubed fingers, a little cold, run over his rim, down to his balls, and back up, and Obi-Wan is already shaking.

“Ob’ika, focus,” Cody says at his ear, and Obi-Wan tries not to pant as he dips his head back down, Satine shivering all around him.

After a minute, Satine suddenly makes a fist around the strands of Obi-Wan’s hair, saying, “ _Stop,_ stop, stop,” and he goes easily when she pulls him up her body to kiss her, tasting herself on his lips.

“Ok,” she says, red in the face and out of breath. From where he’s lying on top of her, Obi-Wan can see tiny specks of green in her sky-blue eyes. He’s still between her splayed legs, and he’s never been so hard in his life, feeling the wet heat of her against his skin. “Ok, you’re forgiven. Cody?”

Cody shifts next to them, and Obi-Wan keens when Cody presses a single finger into him, slick but warm. Obi-Wan holds himself up on both elbows so he doesn’t crush Satine, so he can get enough leverage on his knees to push back into that new pressure. It’s not enough, and far, far too much, all at once.

“How—how do you want me?” Obi-Wan asks with what’s left of his focus.

Satine takes his face between both of her hands and pulls it down to hers, kissing him until he’s lost what little breath he had left. 

“Just follow our lead,” she says, eyes sparkling. 

“You’re perfect, Ob’ika. You’re doing so well,” Cody says, adding another finger with a hum, and he curls his fingers into something that makes Obi-Wan arch up into him. He uses his free hand to pass a piece of foil to Satine, who reaches out from beneath Obi-Wan to take it. She pulls the condom free and pinches the tip before rolling it onto Obi-Wan’s dick, quick and easy.

Satine recrosses her legs over the small of his back, redirecting Obi-Wan’s focus back to her, and he loses track of reality when she wraps a hand around him to guide him in. With her hand on him, her heels dug into his back, and Cody’s fingers twisting inside him—Obi-Wan sinks into Satine like coming home.

He fucks into her slowly, the hot wet pressure almost overwhelming in its sweetness. He’s not going to last long, honestly, but neither is she. If he hadn’t already come once this hour, he doesn’t think he would’ve survived the first push in, not with Satine tight around him and him tight around Cody.

He rocks in, then out, experimental and slow. Satine urges him on with a circle of her hips, and they gradually work out a steady rhythm, trading brief kisses and panting heavily. Behind Obi-Wan, Cody matches their rhythm easily, pushing in and out of Obi-Wan and watching them, hot and serious and appreciative.

It doesn’t take long before Satine comes around him, clenching hard with a high-pitched whine, her eyelashes damp with sweat across the curve of her cheekbones. Obi-Wan slows down, but she fists her hand in his hair, Cody pushes him forward, and he keeps going.

“You’re close,” Cody says, breath hot against his ear, and Obi-Wan closes his eyes and feels Cody’s next voice rattle his very bones. “You’re too close now, but next time—next time we do this, I’ll be fucking you, too. I’ll come in you while you’re hilt deep in her, while you’re pinned between us, taking it and _taking_ it.” 

Cody slips in a third finger to punctuate his last words, and Obi-Wan closes his eyes to imagine it: Satine’s wet heat, Cody filling him up, endlessly rocking between them, the push and pull of pleasure, overwhelming and perfect, and he comes with a hoarse shout.

He must black out for a few seconds, because when he opens his eyes he has collapsed against Satine, and there are fond fingers carding through his sweat-soaked hair. Once he’s settled back down to Earth, he can feel the desire rolling off of Cody in waves: the joy of having and the need to possess, as clear as day.

“Go on, Cody,” Obi-Wan says, his words a little slurred, and he mentally stretches for what Cody needs. “Mark me. Show me—show me that I’m yours.”

The wet sound of Cody stripping his cock lasts only a few seconds before Obi-Wan feels something wet and warm coat the small of his back, and he shudders to be so claimed. Cody collapses with a sigh next to Satine, and Obi-Wan pulls out, shivery and exhausted, and sprawls across them both. He needs to sit up, to tie the condom off, to—

And then Obi-Wan feels Cody’s thick, calloused fingers run through the mess on Obi-Wan’s back, and press, newly-wet, back into him.

Obi-Wan gives a low moan, burying his face in Satine’s shoulder instead. “You’re going to _kill_ me.”

Satine snorts and reaches up to hold his head against her skin.

"We planned an elaborate years-long seduction campaign to get you here, Obi-Wan," Satine says. "You think we didn't plan this part, too?"

Obi-Wan laughs and feels, at last, completely free: buffeted on all sides by the warmth of his partners, their lust for life, and their love for him.

“I’ll never underestimate you again,” he promises, and they joyfully pull him back down.

\--------------------—--------------------

Later, after they've cleaned up and are lying together in the dry Coruscanti heat, Obi-Wan asks, "Well, my clever tacticians, what do we do now?"

"Kill Palpatine," Satine says without hesitation, and she draws lines of aru-besh across Obi-Wan's bare skin like she's making a grocery list instead of plotting treason. "Reclaim the Mandalore System. Fix the clones' advanced aging. Protect the people we love."

Obi-Wan tugs Satine closer to his chest so that Cody can wrap an arm around the both of them. 

"Share everything. Raise warriors," Cody adds, and Obi-Wan shivers at the words of the Mandalorian marriage vows even as he feels Satine laugh against his skin. 

"Yes," Obi-Wan says. " _Yes._ "

-—-

Unfortunately, the Council doesn’t allow Obi-Wan much of a honeymoon period. 

They call him for a meeting that very evening, and the smooth cotton of his robes feels uncomfortably like a mask on his reddened skin. The first time he steps into the hallowed halls of the Temple, red tile and smooth marble stretching before him, he almost expects to be struck by lightning. It seems incredible that the Jedi Masters doesn't notice something different about him, something darker or freer, and he passes through that first Council meeting in a haze of vague trepidation and disbelief.

Luminara alone seeks him out, and then only to gently clasp his shoulder and reassure him that the war will be over soon. She’s leaving for Kashyyyk with Gree and Yoda, and he thinks that she’s more right than she knows.

He smiles, laying his hand over hers. “I’m sure it will be.”

Obi-Wan feels like a pawn that has maneuvered its way across the length of the chessboard, square by single, paltry square, and has finally been crowned a queen. He is free, at last, to move however he sees fit.

Intel from the Outer Rim has placed a huge Separatist fleet out in the Anoat System, and the Senate has elected once more to elevate Chancellor Palpatine’s powers. It isn’t a surprise when he elects Anakin to serve as his representative; the reason for Palpatine’s ongoing, incessant interest in Anakin has become obvious in light of the last day’s revelation.

“Someone’s looking for a new apprentice,” Satine says coolly at their breakfast table, reviewing hacked footage of Palpatine and Anakin at the Galaxies Opera House. The blue and green ballerinas are dim and grainy in the background, but Palpatine’s classic grandfatherly smile would be recognizable at any resolution.

“Well, he certainly won’t be getting mine,” Obi-Wan says. 

They both look at Cody, who shrugs. “He’s your family, so he’s our family, too. But, Obi-Wan, he’s somehow even more stubborn than you are. Go careful.”

He gets his chance when the Council asks him to give Anakin the order to spy on the Chancellor.

“It’s not _fair_ , Master. Everything about this contradicts the Jedi code,” Anakin says, almost growling. There’s a beast lurking, waking, beneath his words, and Obi-Wan thinks that the layers of Anakin’s anger run deeper than the many levels of Coruscant.

Another time, he might’ve dissembled, or disagreed, or begged Anakin to have faith. 

“You’re right,” he says, and it startles Anakin into listening to him. “The Council’s methods and guidance have lost the wisdom they once held. It’s been worrying me for some time now.”

He tucks his hands into his sleeves and turns them towards one of the massive oval windows of the Jedi temple, the flash of ships like tiny schooling fish over the city. Anakin follows, wary and hopeful.

“What should we do?” he asks, and it’s good to hear him use ‘we’. 

“I’m not sure there’s anything we _can_ do, at the moment. They already suspect my doubts,” Obi-Wan lies, the beginnings of a plan starting to unfurl in his mind. Clone intelligence had reported to Satine that Grievous had been identified on Utapau, and Obi-Wan knows who Palpatine would want sent out of the way. “I have the feeling they’ll try to send me back off-planet, soon. If you go instead of me, you won’t be able to spy on the Chancellor, and I’ll have a chance to talk to the Council.”

“Just talk?” 

“Negotiate, maybe,” Obi-Wan says, smiling, but he lets his face fall into something more serious as he takes Anakin by the shoulders. “Anakin. I know I’ve been distant lately, and I’m sorry for not sharing my doubts with you earlier. I just—I need you to know that I love you. You’re like a brother to me. If this war has taught me anything, it’s that there’s nothing we can’t overcome when we’re together. Trust me.”

And he sees it, that second of hope, when Anakin opens his mouth to tell him why there are bags under his eyes, why his emotions burn hotter with fear and anger these days, before both of their wrist comms go off at once.

“It’s the Council,” Anakin says, and Obi-Wan clicks his teeth together to stop from cursing. “They’re calling an emergency meeting to discuss General Grievous.”

He and Anakin lock eyes across the room when Master Yoda calls for Obi-Wan to be sent out, and relief bubbles in his chest when Anakin seems to take this as proof that the Council _is_ trying to get Obi-Wan out of the way. That they are manipulating Obi-Wan and Anakin in equal measure. 

“Not I alone, Masters,” Obi-Wan says. “I have fought the good General alone times and never succeeded. This might be our only chance to pin him and the Separatist leaders down; send Anakin with me, and ensure our success.”

Mace gives him a glare that feels like a Force push. “Skywalker is needed on Coruscant, as you well know.”

“What I know, Master Windu, is that it is possible to win a battle and lose the war—but it is much rarer to see the reverse. We need this victory, and I need Anakin. Surely the situation on Coruscant is less pressing than the location of the Separatist general we’ve been trying to pin down since this war began.”

Yoda’s holoprojection nods thoughtfully, and Ki-Adi-Mundi hums in agreement. Mace is, at last, outvoted.

“You’ll leave in two days,” Mace says, grudging, and Obi-Wan hopes that gives Cody and Satine enough time to finish their preparations. “May the Force be with you both.”

Anakin grins at him after the other Council members file out, an infectious grin like Obi-Wan hasn’t seen since Ahsoka left the Order, and Obi-Wan smiles back. 

Time to prime the trap, he thinks. 

-—-

The Mandalorian embassy in Coruscant’s diplomatic quarter has been turned into a temporary ops center. As Obi-Wan walks through the narrow hallways crowded with rushing troopers and commandos, he thinks that might not, actually, have been a recent change.

He finds Satine and Cody in the center of a sprawling conference room overrun with wires and monitors, conferring with Tech and Echo of the Bad Batch in hushed tones. Tech is the only one with his helmet on, and Obi-Wan can see lines of red text scrolling across his visor.

“Obi-Wan, good,” Satine says, and she knocks the side of her forehead against his when he gets close enough. “We’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Bad news first. With some optimism, please; I’ve got some bad news of my own.”

“We heard,” Tech interrupts, tetchy as always. “Two days to pull off a coup? I thought I’d told Commander Cody to refrain from sending us on more impossible missions.”

“And I thought the Batch didn’t believe in ‘impossible’,” Obi-Wan says, as innocently as he can, and he laughs when Tech flashes a picture of a rude gesture on his visor.

“Well, things get _harder_ when some of our brothers have had their chips activated since almost the start of the war.” 

They all turn to Echo at that. He has his arm plugged into the command console in front of him, and a series of holograms start popping up in sequence as he starts to explain. The first hologram is a trooper in a familiar-looking visor and a long kama, with gears decorating his pauldrons. “Fox and the Red Guard definitely, every member of the Senate Guard probably, and the vast majority of the Coruscant Guard possibly.”

Anger and horror are twin snakes writhing in Obi-Wan’s gut. It makes a horrible sort of sense. 

“This is why Palpatine wasn’t worried about losing the clones to Mandalore,” he says, reaching out a hand as if to touch the hologram of the Guard. “He already knew the chips worked. And he was succeeding with Anakin, too. Nothing else mattered.”

“What’s the plan, then?” Cody asks, and Obi-Wan grounds himself in Cody’s calm.

“I’ve sent a malware worm through the commnets of the Guard, injected into their most recent firmware update. Operations tech is always more susceptible and information tech,” Tech says. “Since we’re fairly sure the chips are voice-activated, it’ll only scramble incoming calls from the Chancellor’s specific frequency. Just let me know when to activate it, General, and you should have a window of opportunity to take on the Chancellor without the Guard in the way.”

Obi-Wan strokes his beard, thoughtful. “It might not be enough, if their chips are already on. I don’t exactly think I can keep a battle with a Sith quiet. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to ask the Batch for a distraction as well—on the other side of the city from the Senate, if you please.”

In response, a bellowing laugh echoes through the entire room. Obi-Wan looks up to see the other Batch members walking towards him. Although his laugh had had no trouble getting through, Wrecker has to duck and turn sideways to get through the door. 

“I like the sound of that!” Wrecker booms.

Beside him, Hunter salutes, easy and professional. “Leave it to us, sir. Distractions are our specialty.”

Obi-Wan smiles, thinking of what he’d told Palpatine when they were crash-landing on Coruscant with a certain kind of irony. “And Sith lords are mine.”

-—-

Obi-Wan watches the _Resolute_ launch from the Coruscant shipyard with determination, feeling as if he’s just lit a very short fuse. Next to him, Cody falls into parade rest.

“Ready, sir?” Cody asks, all proper and polite on the bridge of the _Negotiator_ , looking for all the world as if he hadn’t had his dick halfway down Obi-Wan’s throat only two hours before.

“Take us away, Commander,” Obi-Wan says, and the ship engines purr beneath him. He flexes his hands on the railing, hoping he's strong enough for this. For all the Jedi's warnings, he doesn't feel any more powerful for having forsaken their path. Perhaps Satine was right, and he simply chose to walk the middle ground. 

One thing is for certain, at least: he’s off the edge of any map he’s ever had. He is charting unknown waters, and it’s exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

Cody signals the pilot to exit the Coruscanti atmosphere, and they’re off—but not to Utapau. 

True to his word, Echo keeps the network completely clear of any sign of the LAAT/is that Obi-Wan and Ghost Company take back down to the planet surface. Most of the ships head towards the senate building, blending in with the Coruscant Guard ships, but Obi-Wan and Cody head towards the Mandalorian embassy. 

Satine meets them in full, gleaming navy beskar, and she steps back to gesture to two massive black plastoid crates behind her. 

“Gifts,” she says, and Obi-Wan opens the crate to her right when she beckons him on. It takes him a long second to understand what he's looking at, and when he finally does, he inhales sharply and looks up.

“It’s yours.” Cody says. 

He must’ve known this was coming, because he’s pulling out his own set of beskar armor without any of Obi-Wan’s hesitation. Cody’s is still orange and white, but it’s more orange with white markings than the other way around. There are navy stars accompanying the white sunbursts, too: a mirror of the armor Obi-Wan has laid before him. Now that Obi-Wan’s looking for it, he sees the orange highlights on the edges of Satine’s T-slit, and the little suns on her pauldrons.

White for a new start, Obi-Wan thinks, pulling his armor from the crate and rubbing his thumb across the impossibly smooth metal. His armor looks like a cosmic motif, with a navy blue base covered in orange suns and white stars. Orange, a lust for life. Blue, reliability. 

Cody and Satine smile at him, eyebrows raised, and he lets out a shaky breath. He might be in uncharted territory, but there is no better map to fly by than these two: his sun and his stars.

“ _Oya_ ,” he says, pulling off his robes to clasp the armor on, and they all share a grin.

“ _Oya, oya!_ ”

-—-

The three of them are unrecognizable as anything but devout Mandalorians when they enter the Senate in full armor, and Obi-Wan keeps their presences in the Force blocked until they’re standing on the circular platform allotted to Mandalore, staring down at the array of delegates from every Republic world and at least half of the neutral systems.

Obi-Wan clicks his back teeth to activate their private comm system. He’s disabled most of the fancier pieces of the user interface, but he’s kept that. He'd been a little worried about fighting in unfamiliar gear, but Satine and Cody had done their homework. It fits better than the clone armor that he’s worn a few times, honestly.

“Hunter, go,” he says into the comm, and Hunter sends confirmation and signs off.

The explosions that undoubtedly ensue aren't audible from this distance, but Fox almost immediately strides across the Senate floor to the Chancellor’s podium, whispers in the Chancellor’s ear, and then strides away. It’s oddly reminiscent of what Obi-Wan had seen when he first returned to Mandalore, and he feels Satine bristle at the sight of one of her men acting like a reprogrammed droid.

They wait. The Chancellor calls the start of the session, and his disc floats up to the center of the room. He lays out the session’s agenda with gentle patience, walking through what is essentially a laundry list of things he’s already approved. 

After fifteen minutes of this, Cody tilts his head: a sure sign that he’s reading something on his head’s up display. 

“Echo,” he says over the comms, “ _now._ ”

It’s impossible to confirm in the Senate Rotunda, but if Echo’s done his work, the Guard barracks have been sealed behind blast doors, and communications outside of the rotunda have been disabled. Now or never.

Satine flicks something on their disc console, and it detaches itself from the wall.

“Ah, I see we have a proposed adjustment to our agenda: a statement from the Mandalorian delegation,” Palpatine calls out, beckoning them forward. “Mand’alor Kryze, do you have an update on the war for the Senate?”

“Not an update,” Satine says. “An accusation.”

Obi-Wan takes his helmet off, letting all of his shields drop at the same time. His eyes meet Palpatine’s without a shred of fear. 

“Darth Sidious,” he says.

The collective gasp from the Senate sucks the air from the room, and Obi-Wan isn’t sure if it’s because of his armor or because of his words. He pulls his helmet back on and ignites his saber.

“What is the meaning of this?” Palpatine calls from below, and Obi-Wan sees his guard frantically trying to call for the troopers locked in their barracks. “Senators, the Mandalorians have blinded Obi-Wan Kenobi—witness this, the best of the Jedi has turned traitor to the Republic.”

“I’m not the traitor here, Chancellor," Obi-Wan says, and he leaps into the air.

Midleap, he pulls on Palptaine’s disc with the Force and uses a mix of gravity and the Force to slingshot towards the Chancellor. His growing momentum means he won’t be able to pull the strike if Palpatine doesn’t try to deflect it. Anything less than full commitment, though, and a Sith could smell the doubt. He only has a split second to think about the consequences of starting so strong: to accept the chance of killing an innocent man for the risk he might pose to Obi-Wan’s family. 

A Jedi couldn’t do it.

Palpatine doesn’t react beyond widening his eyes and stumbling backwards, mouth open to yell for his guards. Falling closer, Obi-Wan can see every wrinkle on the man’s face, the stubble on his cheeks, until he is past the point when anyone could react fast enough to block, even a Sith. He has a millisecond to regret the blow, and then—

A red lightsaber jars his whole arm, pushing him back with more strength than he ever thought one person could wield.

“Kenobi,” Palpatine drawls, and his voice has lost every molecule of kindness it had once possessed. “You are the last person I expected to have the guts to do this.”

He blasts Obi-Wan off the disc, forcing Obi-Wan to use the Force to soften his landing on the Senate floor. Above him, senators and delegates have started screaming, pushing their way to the exits. Cody and Satine, high above the chaos, are singular points of calm amidst the thronging masses. Cody is already firing at the Chancellor's guards with his DC-17, while Satine hovers in the air with her jetpack, seeking a better vantage point.

For a second, Obi-Wan wonders if Palpatine will try to make a run for it. They’d considered locking the rotunda doors, but even the Mandalorians had been unwilling to risk the undoubtedly great civilian casualties. He’s considering activating his own jetpack and going hunting when Palpatine’s red saber appears above him.

Deflecting the blow feels like deflecting a Mudhorn, and Palpatine follows the first with three more in quick succession. Obi-Wan falls into a defensive lightsaber form on instinct, unable to take even a microsecond to think in the face of Palpatine’s flurry of quick cuts. The Force leads him left, up, right, and he eventually has to flip away to get the space to breathe. There are some flashing red lights in his HUD, and he realizes with a sickening lurch that, if he hadn’t been wearing beskar, he’d almost certainly be down a few limbs.

Cody and Satine resume laying down cover fire now that there’s some space between him and Palpatine, and Palpatine sends the bolts flying back with lazy flicks of his wrist.

“Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi Council’s pride and joy,” Palpatine mocks. “Fallen so far, and for what?”

“Your plan stops here, Sidious. Every senator in the room saw your lightsaber,” Obi-Wan says, trying to keep his gasping breath quiet enough that the vocoder won’t catch it.

“You think that matters? You think, at this point, that anything you do could matter at all?” Palpatine laughs, soft and all the more sinister for it, and then he launches himself back at Obi-Wan.

Over the electric hiss of lightsabers clashing, he hears Palpatine screech, "Commander Cody, execute Order 66!"

Obi-Wan’s breath catches in his throat, not daring to look up, but the endless barrage of blasterfire in Palpatine’s direction doesn't even stutter.

"The only thing I'll be executing," Cody says, "is _you,_ Chancellor."

The angry flash of Palpatine’s lightsaber is all that Obi-Wan can focus on, but he still hears Satine choke on a laugh through their helmet comm. “Cody, you’re on the couch for a week for that one.”

“Less flirting,” Obi-Wan says, “More fighting.”

“Like you’re one to talk!” Satine gripes.

“Alright, back up for a second, Ob’ika. Satine, get ready,” Cody says, and Obi-Wan turns a parry and riposte into a backwards flip, spinning himself towards the discs along the rotunda walls. Whatever extra powers the Dark Side promised would certainly be useful right about now, he thinks wryly, watching Palpatine stalk towards him from twenty feet away.

Fortunately, Cody and Satine had been working on a plan of their own. Cody fires his fibercord whip towards Palpatine and snares one of his arms. A quick tug pulls Palpatine off balance, and Cody starts firing shots with his left hand while Satine ensnares Palpatine’s other arms. Obi-Wan presses the advantage, blasting Palpatine with a Force push strong enough to knock the lightsaber from his hand and pull the fibercords taut.

Held like a marionette by the twin fibercord whips, Palpatine looks up at Obi-Wan with a knowing little smile.

“You would have made a wonderful Sith,” Palpatine says, oddly sincere. “I regret telling Dooku not to pursue you.”

It stings to know that even the Sith had overestimated Obi-Wan's Jedi resolve.

“That won’t be the only thing you regret," Obi-Wan says as he walks forward, saber held in front of him.

Palpatine’s chuckle makes Obi-Wan’s blood run cold. “Perhaps.”

He does—something—that sends a purple pulse of electricity crackling along the fibercord whips, and Obi-Wan’s heart stops when both Satine and Cody cry out.

“Cut the cords!” he yells, throwing himself towards Palpatine, but Palpatine just turns that terrible, vicious power towards him instead. Obi-Wan falls to his knees, his lightsaber dropping from nerveless fingers, and he feels like his heart is being burnt out of his chest. It's pure agony, like a plasma welder been driven slowly but surely between his eyes, and he thinks he feels something wet dripping from his ears and into the neck seal of his helmet. His HUD is a maze of static.

“Beskar,” he hears distantly, awfully, in that calm oily voice. “What a wonderful conductor.”

Even more distantly, he hears someone shouting his name. Then, as quickly as it had come the pain lets up, and the thoughts and sensation that rush in during its absence are almost worse. He wrestles his helmet off with the last of his energy, drawing in grateful lungfuls of air and uncurling his fingers. When he at last looks up, he finds Palpatine smiling down at him, every inch the paternal grandfather again.

Obi-Wan’s lightsaber is halfway across the Senate floor.

“Get up,” he hears from the helmet in his hands, and he would do anything for that voice, but the spasms in his leg muscles won’t let him stand. “Obi-Wan! Damn it, Obi, get _up_!”

“Ob’ika, please!”

Lightning is sparking around Palpatine’s fingers again, and Obi-Wan staggers to his feet in full anticipation of being knocked right back down.

“Don’t worry,” Palpatine says, and he honestly sounds consoling. “I’ll kill you first, so you won’t have to see them die.”

Damn it, Obi-Wan thinks, the gears in his brain finally getting enough traction to turn. Damn it, _damn it_. He thinks he might be able to deflect the lightning if he had a conduit, but his saber’s gone, and he doesn’t have a piece of beskar long enough. 

Palpatine raises his arm, still smiling. “Goodbye, Obi—”

“ _Obi-Wan!_ ” he hears, and something flies towards him just as lightning starts arching through the air.

He pulls the object to him on pure instinct, and he ignites the Darksaber just in time to catch the lightning on its tip, for another wave of energy to force him to one knee. The black blade hums with it, eager and hungry, and Obi-Wan gasps in relief. It still takes energy he doesn’t have to hold the blade up, elbows locked, pushing back with the Force—but he is well-accustomed to being asked for more than he can give.

The Darksaber burns in his grip, but this, now, is different. If he dies with this blade in hand, then Satine loses Mandalore, even if she and Cody were able to get away from the Sith. 

And so here, at the end of all things, he is holding onto so much. He has so much to _lose_. He holds the hope of their planet in his hands, and the hope of his partners in his heart. Truly, awfully desperate at last, he reaches out for them in the Force, and they pour everything they have into their bond.

He chokes on it, on the influx of love and devotion that rushes into and out of him. It isn’t the power of the Dark Side; it’s just them and the sweet song that thrums in their hearts, telling him to live, live, _live_.

It gives him the strength to twist his back leg on the floor, putting all of his weight into the ball of his foot. 

“You can’t keep this up for long,” Palpatine hisses.

“I don’t—need—long,” Obi-Wan grits out, and he launches himself through the air, through the haze of lightning, and he buries the Darksaber in Palpatine’s heart.

His lunge takes him close enough to Palpatine to hear the last, wheezing breath rattle out of his lungs, to feel the body slump, it's eyes wide with shock. As the body starts to fall, Obi-Wan takes a step back and removes Palpatine’s head with a single flourish of his black blade.

It falls to the Senate floor with a thud and then slowly, gradually, rolls to a stop.

Satine and Cody land next to him in the next instant, and they pull him in by the back of his neck, all their foreheads connecting in a perfect triangle of a Keldabe kiss.

“It’s done,” Cody says. “Ob’ika, you did it, it’s done.”

Obi-Wan drags in a shaky breath. Cody and Satine’s arms are, quite possibly, the only thing holding him up. 

From behind them, there’s the sound of one lightsaber igniting, then another, and another. If he hadn’t just seen Palpatine’s head fall to the floor, Obi-Wan would have thought that he’d chopped yet another Sith in half and still failed to kill him.

He turns, slowly, to find the Jedi Council staring him down. There’s a shadow in the open doorway behind them, and Obi-Wan just barely manages to catch a glimpse of Anakin’s terrified face as he ushers Padme through. He must have turned the _Resolute_ around when the _Negotiator_ hadn’t dropped out of hyperspace next to it and rushed to the Senate Building. Obi-Wan wonders, heart in his throat, how much Anakin had seen, if Anakin had wanted to interfere, and hadn't. 

And neither had the Jedi Council.

“You’re a little too late, I’m afraid,” Obi-Wan tells the array of lightsabers before him. “The fun’s already over.”

“Come with us,” Mace says, purple light playing across the lines of his frown.

And that, that’s the end of it, Obi-Wan thinks. He pulls his lightsaber back into his hand just to see the Council members flinch, and then he tucks it into his belt and hands the Darksaber back to Satine.

“No, gentle masters, I don’t think so."

“A dangerous path, you walk,” Yoda says grimly, eyebrows drawn together. “No longer of the Dark or the Light, you are. Leave now you do, and never return, you will—not to the Council, not to the Order.”

Obi-Wan laughs, little more than a huff of breath, and puts his helmet back on. Satine and Cody fall into position at each of his shoulders. “Then it’s quite a good thing that you taught me not to get too attached to it. Goodbye, Master Yoda. Goodbye, Jedi Masters. Perhaps we'll meet again.”

The three Mandalorians activate their jetpacks simultaneously, heading for the emergency exits at the very top floor, conveniently opened for them courtesy of Echo.

Their flight is short enough; one of the landing docks to the Senate Building has a LAAT/i waiting for them, and they circle around to it.

When they get close enough, they see it also has Anakin waiting with a very, very pregnant Padme.

Obi-Wan lands at a run, hurrying towards them until he can clasp each of them by the shoulder.

“Anakin, Padme, are you alri—”

“Obi-Wan, we don’t have anywhere else to go,” Anakin interrupts. He was angry before, but now he’s just scared. Terrified, and shaking with it. “I think—I think the baby’s going to die, or that Padme will.”

Padme tucks herself close to Anakin’s side with a hand around the top and bottom of her baby bump. “Obi-Wan, please, can you help us?”

The puzzle pieces click into place, suddenly: the scared underbelly of Anakin’s anger, what he’s been so desperately hiding from the Council. Obi-Wan had known they were together, of course, but he hadn't known this. It's obvious, now, what lever Palpatine was going to pull to bring Anakin to the Dark. Obi-Wan’s heart breaks for what could have been, then it beats for is.

“Yes, of course. Of course I’ll help,” Obi-Wan says, looking back helplessly at Cody and Satine as they land behind him and remove their helmets.

“Come with us to Mandalore,” Cody says without a second’s hesitation. “There's a man there who raised hundreds of my brothers, and I’m sure he could give you some pointers.”

Satine comes up to Padme’s side and loops their arms together, easy as anything. 

“And I’ve got a lot of debts to collect,” she says. “I could use a true diplomat.”

As Satine tucks Padme into one of the seats and Cody confers with the pilot, Obi-Wan watches the Coruscanti skyline drop away beneath them: a dwindling sea of chrome and corruption that he’s glad to let rust into nothing. He’s taking what matters most with him, and he knows, with a comforting surety, that Rex will find Ahsoka, and she'll come find them too. 

Cody had been right about the Jedi code. A map towards honor can only take you so far, he thinks. It's love that brings you home.

-—-

—

-

**Epilogue**

The room fills with high-pitched laughter as Cody tosses Luke up in the air, catches him on the way down, and lifts him around the room like he’s a Firespray-31. Leia rolls around on the floor by their feet, pretending to try and shoot her brother down. When she starts using the Force to launch things from Satine’s desk, though, the game becomes substantially less pretend.

A solid jade lothcat lifts itself from a stack of flimsi and is hurled, with remarkably terrible accuracy, past Luke, through the curtains, out the open balcony doors—

And then stops, shivering, in the air just over the railing. Obi-Wan twitches his fingers, and the bauble floats gently back to its original place on the desk. 

“Nice catch,” Satine says, laughing. 

Cody tucks Luke under one arm, scoops up Leia under the other, and moves to join them on the balcony. Below them, Sundari is a beating heart of a city, pulsing with new life and old strength.

“Almost time to say goodbye,” Cody says to the toddlers in his arms, and, as one, they start screeching a protest. Obi-Wan takes Leia and puts her on one hip, and her arms go around his neck at the same time the entrance doors to the Mand’alor suite crack open.

“ _No_!” she yells, directly into his ears, and he winces even as he rubs a hand down her back.

“I’ll see you again soon, my dear,” he says. This, if anything, makes her yell louder. Luke has resorted to little whimpering sniffles into Cody’s shoulder that are somehow more devastating. Cody shakes his head at Obi-Wan’s somewhat desperate look, and he ruffles Leia’s hair with practiced indifference to her shouting.

“C’mon, princess. If you don’t behave well, Mom and Dad might not let you come visit any more,” he says, and Obi-Wan sees Anakin and Padme stifle their laughter as they shut the door behind them. When Anakin is close enough, Obi-Wan disentangles Leia’s clutching fingers from the weave of his robe and passes her over. Luke, resembling more a barnacle than a child at this point, takes even more gentle coaxing before consenting to his mother’s arms.

“As if we could ever pass up on free babysitting,” Padme says in a faux-whisper over Luke’s head.

“Seriously,” Anakin adds, and oh, it’s so good to see him smile like this again. “Who else can say they’ve got a Mand’alor, a commander, and a space wizard on their childcare roster?”

Obi-Wan sputters, then glares to hide it. “I’m _hardly_ a space wizard, Anakin.”

Anakin’s almost to the door when he turns back, and his and Leia’s stares are so similar that Obi-Wan’s heart pounds oddly against his chest. He almost lost this, he thinks. 

“They’re both strong in the Force,” Anakin says. “Will you train them, when they’re older? I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have as their teacher.”

Staggered by the sincerity of Anakin’s words, Obi-Wan can only blink until Satine elbows his side. “I—of course, Anakin. I’d—yes, yes, I will.”

Anakin smiles again, and the doors close on the raucous yelling of two toddlers who have already forgotten the injustice of being dragged away.

“Mandalorian Jedi, hm?” Satine asks, grabbing onto one of his arms while Cody comes up behind them. “I’ll be hard-pressed to keep my throne when they get older.”

Obi-Wan leans backwards, basking in Satine’s warm amusement and Cody’s steady grace. 

“I’m sure we can think up a good consolation prize for when you lose,” he says, grinning, and he goes laughingly along when they each pull him into a kiss, one after another after another: the sweet joy of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s all she wrote! ...Mostly. (I have a longer epilogue planned, but I’ll admit that it’s mostly just a feel-good, deeply nasty PWP that I haven’t actually written yet.)
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this! It was quite a bit of work for what is essentially a rewrite of Clone Wars + True Mandalorian Satine, but I had a lot of fun writing it. And I hope you had fun reading it! 
> 
> Please leave a comment and feel free to ask me any questions. Cheers!
> 
> **Lastly, a few notes:**
> 
> Q1: Wait, wait, what happened to Maul?  
> A1: I really wanted to include him! I wanted to include him so badly, but the pacing just wasn’t right. He was in the Death Watch camp on Nal Hutta with Pre Viszla, and Satine & crew absolutely wrecked his shit when they went to get the Darksaber back. It was cross-universe revenge. Maybe I’ll write that battle as part of an extended AU universe…
> 
> Q2: What happens to the Jedi/Republic?  
> A2: Without an army or a leader, the Republic consents to Jedi oversight for the time it takes the member states to elect a new Chancellor. This does not go over well with the masses. Fortunately, even though Grievous considers pressing the CIS advantage and attacking Coruscant, the Sep leaders convince him to simply sue for peace instead. The Seps separate, the Republic eventually elects Mon Mothma, and things go back to business as usual… or do they? 
> 
> (Luke and Leia straighten out the remnants of Palpatine’s power base, though, don’t you worry.)
> 
> Q3: What happened with Tup?  
> A3: After Kix removes his chip, the healers shove him in a bacta tank for a week. He’s got some lingering problems—a bit of speech aphasia and memory loss—but Fives is helping him through it, and he’s getting better every day.


End file.
